


A Song Of Flame And Ashes

by SkySamuelle



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Daenerys Targaryen Deserves Better, Daenerys Targaryen-centric, Dark Fantasy, F/M, Fix It, Fix-It, Gen, Jon Snow Centric, Jonerys, Jonerys centric, King Bran Stark, Magic, Making logic out of a logicless season, Mysticism, Necromancy, POV Arya Stark, POV Bran Stark, POV Daenerys Targaryen, POV Jon Snow, POV Sansa Stark, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Prophecy, Queen Daenerys, Queen Sansa, Resurrection, Romance, Shadow Binding, Some unrequited Tyrion/Dany limited to one chapter, Supernatural - Freeform, Warg Sansa Stark, Warging, fuck D&D, jonerys baby, some Drogo/Dany
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 45,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkySamuelle/pseuds/SkySamuelle
Summary: Post Series/ Season8 : Bran keeps many secrets, Jon is beyond the wall, haunted by remorse and regret and quite a few realizations,Daenerys returns to life, just to battle the shadows of her mind in the temple of the Lord Of Light. Sansa Stark lives her own bittersweet dream of spring ... For awhile anyway.A child awaits to be born and shoulder his heavy destiny. Jonerys story, with a heavy bend toward the mystical and the mythological because i do think we were robbed when all prophecies were turned into jokes or make believe.Also: it is recknocking time for everyone.





	1. The Raven King

**Author's Note:**

> I consider season 8 a personal insult to everybody ‘s intelligence and I would have preferred if they had spared us and cancelled after season 7. Unfortunately that mess happened but hey, in a Magic world and with talented writers who actually keep an eye out for plot holes, we can embrace the challenge of fixing it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bran does check on Drogon, he just does not tell anyone what he finds.
> 
> Aka this is the story where I try to make a sense of Bran’s motivations in allowing the situation to degenerate to those levels, assuming he is not a sociopath.

CHAPTER 1- The Raven King

 

“ Did you look for Drogon ? I was just thinking it would not a bad idea if you could push him back toward Valyria, or somewhere just as desolate. Nothing like rebuilding the city to remind you of the damage he might still do without his mother to direct him and there’s always the risk he might take up hunting humans again...”

Tyrion shudders at the idea, although his expression reflects the relaxed giddiness it always holds when he managed to have a good cup or two before even touching his breakfast.

Five years from now, his habits will kill him, and Bran will need a new hand. It will be someone from the Vale, a Royce, a rough but competent man who will have very little patience for Bronn’s lack of skill with coins.

Bran’s lips twitch in a barely there smile.

“ That won’t be an issue. I saw Drogon won’t come to Westeros again “.

And that’s the truth. Just not all of it.

“ That’s a relief” Sam pipes in, and relieves his King from the burden of changing subject, carrying news from the citadel about issues Bran already knows, a plague breaking out in the reach and the study of vaccines going on for weeks without apparent result. 

Bran’s attention drifts away because he already saw how this story ends too, in another couple of weeks.

This is his life now, being a spectator to lives he can barely touch, preparing and waiting for the day to pass his burden to his heir, the way the previous Three-eyed Raven passed it to him.

There are days he thinks a stronger man would have not crumbled away under the weight, and there are days he simply thinks he was too young when he received it, his character not formed enough to allow him to retain desires or goals of his own.

Seeing has instead consumed everything he was or could be . His mind seems always to be struggling to not get lost in following the threads between past and future.

It is not always ugly tough, what he : there’s still such a beauty to the world, even in the mids of chaos and violence, and such a perfect geometry in the way events connect , forming patterns of meaning , he feels often like the hands of Old Gods are always weaving at the expense of the unaware mankind.

The thing he is sorry about - in any capacity he is able to be sorry now- is that the role of witness he is the only one he seems able to perform.

A different man might have stepped in, when Theon offered to guard him, that terrible night the world almost ended except for the fact it was not meant to, but in all other pathways they could thread, Arya did not make it in time, for a thousand small intricacies of combinations of coincidences. Any other man to guard Bran Stark that night, and all was lost.

So, after looking, Bran Stark retreated behind a mask of apathy, tuned out any inkling of remorse, and let fate play out.

Let Theon die, so everyone else could live.

But he made sure to give that one thing that Theon had craved and thought he would never attain, the one thing Theon was looking for : absolution.

 

Much the same way, he could have stopped Daenerys Targaryen ‘s path to madness so easily, a thousand different ways.

He might have just told her that when Viserion died, her fate had been unmade with the unraveling of the curse on her womb ( only life can pay for death, only death can pay for life),that the child she and Jon had conceived under that waterfall, under the joined blessing of the old gods and the lord of the light, had the potential to someday become the next three eyed raven and so much more.

If he had done that, Daenerys and Jon would have married in the godswood, despite Sansa’s misgivings. They would have had a few months of happiness, as the plan to starve the capital took much longer than it was foreseen. Sansa and Arya would come around the idea of a new family member.

But Daenerys would have died in childbirth and Jon in battle little after, leaving their little boy to be raised a puppet king under the guidance of Varys and Tyrion, Sansa a distant guardian.

King’s Landing would still be near decimated by the common people killing each other for the little food available, in being beaten to death in riots and in the increasingly violent repression Cersei had decided upon to keep potential rebellions from occurring.

So Bran stood back, with little doubt.

He could still have told Jon to stand closer to his queen, but Jon, too confused about his feelings and what the reveal of his birth meant to him , would have just made even more a mess of the situation.

He could have refused to tell his sisters the secret of Jon’s origins and counsel him to stay silent too, but at point a curious Arya would stop to nothing but eventually hound the secret from Sam.

If Bran had acted to keep Sam silent, Sam still would break his promise, too resentful of Daenerys to not press the issue at a later time, venting to Sansa.

In all pathways, Tyrion and Varys turned on the Dragon Queen. In some of them, the poisoning attempt occurred before and the child was lost, spurring Daenerys on a path to vengeance, fire and blood on King’s Landing.

At last, at least, Bran could have acted to avoid Missandei of Naath to be taken, ensuring Grey Worm would stay lucid during the conquest of the southern capital.

In a world where that young woman lived, Tyrion would still turn his trying to prevent the execution of his siblings and managing only to cause his own as well.

Daenerys and Jon would have married in that future too, given a sister to their Daeron within a couple of years, and that Targaryen restoration would have brought the realization that is not possible to break the wheel.  
The constant effort of cutting away treasonous plots and ridding away the realm of its corruption would have turned the idealism of Jon and Daenerys in an uncompromising rulership, and Daeron would have grown in a perfectly ordinary prince.

Bran could have liked to live in that world, where he was only the brother to Sansa’s Lady Of Winterfell.

The question of whether he should have caused that world to exist still plagues him, if he is to be honest with himself.

But he had also seen Drogon melting the Iron Throne, and taking the still warm corpse of his mother away. He had seen the priestess Kinvara, gazing in the flames weeks before that, receiving visions of a great fire that would end an era and set beginning to another, visions of the Uburnt guarded in death by her furious beast of a son, seemingly determined to starve himself out in grief.

A resurrection, the birth of a boy touched by the magic of flame and shadow when he was still in the womb, carrying the blood of wargs and dragon lords, a boy that like his mother would bring magic back to the world, only on a much larger scale.

Daenerys, spending the whole pregnancy and nearly the year after sheltered in a temple, battling a deep depression and the shadows of her mind, before reclaiming herself, in both her best and her worst, becoming whole. Rising once more Queen Of Dragon’s Bay, uniting the cities under the second sons and her red god Faith, renouncing the name of her forefathers to create hers.

Opening the path her boy would someday thread.

Bran had known then he was not meant to change anything. He had felt it was almost unnatural, to prevent the events that would lead to the creation of the man meant to relieve him of his burden.

One day, Daeron will come for him, knowing more of magic Bran had when he had taken his place as Three Eyed Raven, and will accomplish great things with that gift.

He will never sit on any throne that is not Essosi, because the six kingdoms will set to secede after Bran’s rule turns to its epilogue.

Everything will be well, only not for Jon, who will never know just how much he lost.

And maybe not telling him is the kindest thing he ever could do for his brother, but the doubt always hovers on the edge of his mind.

For the realm Daenerys Targaryen has to stay dead. Any interfering in her path in the next few years might compromise the final result in any part- her hard won sanity, Daeron’s life, her survival to the trials before her. It is a delicate balance.

Jon, who twice ended up causing the death of a woman he loved for duty, who left the wall to join the free folk, tormented by the idea he became all Ned Stark most despised ( queen slayer and kinslayer and oathbreaker), who now sees he has done to Daenerys what his brothers did to him, is an element too volatile to add to the life of a woman who now equally loves and hates him.

At least for now.

Bran can’t quite quell the hope that someday a pathway will open, and maybe he will be able to tell his brother what he knows without compromising the future. 

He will keep looking for a path to an happier future and in the meantime... he will try, at the best of his abilities, to watch out for all of them.

 

—-

Note : I realize right now we are all angry and negative enough after that horrible finale, and I don’t want to add to bad mood creating something too agansty. Ideally if I continue this story there will be at least three more chapters - a chapter about Daenerys journey through the faith of red god, because that always fascinated me and I still think of her as an Azhor Ai figure, a chapter about Jon’s journey among the wildling folk, because I think he has some issues to confront and I would like to bring him closer to his book counterpart, and eventually a reunion and a soft epilogue.

If my inspiration was to die, just remember I wanted my Jonerys growing old together, but I had not figured how, much like Bran .


	2. The Vagabond Crow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon Snow is living beyond the wall, but the ghosts of his past keep haunting him.

Beyond the Wall, Jon Snow’s dreams are plagued by nightmares. Most often he dreams of the only real father he has ever known, Ned Stark, grim faced and silent, standing just out of his reach, eyes full of judgment.

_Queen-Slayer, Kin-Slayer, Oath-Breaker. There’s one thing left I taught you as father, that you have not betrayed?_

That accusing gaze seems to say, and it leaves him always defenseless, flayed alive by the truth he will try to forget in daytime hours.

He awakes always sweaty, guilty, angry, a cloak of anguish settling above him as Ghost howls somewhere outside and far away.

And he will feel like screaming too, most often, because all he never wanted it was being a Stark, a true born one, and his father was the man he looked up, whole his life, so he cannot explain to himself how he got to this point.

Once, when  Jaimie Lannister first came to Winterfell with King Robert’s party, it had been easy for  him and Robb to despise him, because their father made it very clear what he thought of men who turned their cloak on their king. Some things were sacred, and while it was bad enough that the Lannister man had done that while wearing the white cloak of one who was sworn to serve and protect, the true abomination, in the old gods’ eyes, it was to assassinate your legitimate sovrereign, hiding your true intent like a serpent until you struck in betrayal.

Jon Snow had them wholeheartedly agreed with his father’s assessment of the situation.

It truly seemed like an impossible thing that years after, he would be    committing the same crime.

_How did I ever become this? A man who slays his queen while he looks into her eyes, full of trust and love, and swears words that make a mockery of his fealty_?

 

When he thinks of that, he gets angry with himself all over again, the fury burning hotter and wilder with each time the memory stirs awake in his mind.

He does not understand it at all if he looks behind, because it seems  so obvious it was wrong and utterly dishonorable under every aspect.

He knows he was angry with her that day, trying hard to separate in his mind the queen from the woman. He had felt personally betrayed by the slaughter of so many innocents, because he had believed in her, her goodness and her vision, and last couple of weeks he could barely recognize in that feverish shell the strong, capable leader he had met in Dragonstone.

He had wondered if she had deceived him, or if, more likely, the battle of Winterfell had left her damaged- he knew there were men that did not return quite right from battle, hyper vigilant and exceedingly aggressive or fearful. 

He had not known how to reach out and fix her , not when he was still firmly entangled in that fierce rejection of being a Targaryen. One moment he felt like he wanted her in arms so strongly he could not breathe, and by the next moment he would remember she was his aunt and keeping it in the family it was such a Targaryen thing he just... could not have that, inside him.

He had allowed Tyrion’s words to settle like a spell over him, that day- a man who, like him, was in love with her and felt how wrong all of what had happened was, saying things he feared to be true, things that felt like a punch in the gut. Arya’s harsh judgment of Daenerys too, had held its weight, when he was already so uncertain, full of horror.

 

Then he had been to see *her*, half hoping she would contradict everything he felt with some greater truth, or a glimpse of the woman he thought he had known.

But Daenerys was been as unrecognizable as ever, soft and ethereal but eeringly at peace among the ashes, at home in the carnage, speaking of a future that frightened him exactly because he  thought, for a moment, he could be fine with that vision she painted, if it meant he could have her.

So he had ... murdered her. He had assassinated his queen.

The enormity of his crime had nearly suffocated him as soon he saw the realization dawning in her eyes, felt her body folding like a too fragile thing in his embrace.

He had felt at once horrible, despicable, and when Drogon had come, his anger and his grief ready to destroy everything in his path, Jon had not moved out of his way.

Kill me- he had thought- it is your right. I deserve it.

But Drogon had just looked  at him with his terrible spite and poured his rage elsewhere. Most likely more out of defiance and hatred than any respect of the blood in his veins ( Jon had always had this feeling around the dragons, that while Rhaegal regarded him with some curiosity, Drogon had a keen interest in intimidating him, simply because he was not allowed to eat him at once).

Afterwards, he had left Tyrion lull him again in the illusion that what he had done was a necessary thing evil, a deed that had saved the realm from many wars to come.

As if it was enough of a excuse, to murder your queen because you no longer shared her agenda.

Now with months to stew over all had happened, far away from everything and everyone, all Jon sees is how easily he had allowed himself to be swayed.

Surely he could have given Daenerys time to show her true colors, or himself more chances  to sway her away from her dreams of conquest. There was good in her still. He could have tried at least to appeal to that.

He could have tried to stay true to his oaths longer.

He could have tried to depose her upfront.

Instead, he had picked the dishonorable way.

He had picked murder, and he had  allowed himself to dance like puppet on the strings of a man Daenerys had pretty much every right to execute, conveniently just in time to allow him to get away with his treachery while condemning him for his. 

Maybe Daenerys was not the only one to go insane those days.

Jon Snow is ready to admit he had acted the fool.

He still tries to tell himself Daenerys was far too gone to be reasoned with, that he saved lives at the price of his heart and his honor both.

But then his mind returns to Tyrion’s expression in their last meeting, like the man had not spoken of madness or of a woman they could have spared or mourned,  but of a Westeros that could maybe be better if free of her shadow.

He feels ... used, dirty.

And while he can’t defend what Daenerys has done to Kings Landing, he thinks of all kings that came before her, Robert included, that razed cities to the ground even after the enemy’ surrender to prove a point, at times, and that were not held to any high standards simply because they had vowed nothing different.

He wonders if Daenerys could not have healed, if she was given more time, more trust, and a chance to think her survival did not hinge solely on her ability to wield terror and destruction as weapons.

He will never know, and that, he finds, it is the most distressing thing of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. A Little Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion updates us on the situation of the six... wait , five kingdoms.

It has taken Bronn exactly one year to lose Highgarden.

Tyrion wishes with all of himself he could say he did not expect that, but honestly when the marriage negotiations between Bronn and the Redwyne girl that was picked for him failed to come to anything solid, he had suspected they were being strung along.

With good reason - Bronn, for all his streetsmart cunning, was the least likely candidate to win the alliance of the sophisticated, politically savy noble families of the Reach. He was given his role in the king council because he held the most prosperous region of the realm, in an attempt to give the reach lords a reason to support him, but his lack of experience had played against him. Having never kept a large keep, or received a formal education, he had been unable to administer the region without delegating most of his tasks to loyal men that had, apparently, been in the pocket of Willas Tyrell.

Tyrion had expected problems but had not counted, maybe stupidly, on the less flashy grandson of Olenna Tyrell - the man had basically vanished after his sister death and had been assumed his worsening health had made unable of anything but hiding among his Hightower relations.

Instead, Willas had proved a surprisingly capable player- he had kept a low profile and feigned acceptance of his lost status right up the point the rebellion had been perfectly organized. High Garden had suddenly closed its borders and declared its indipendence under the Tyrell banner.

Bran The Broken had just replied back with a raven his acceptance of their choice, announced his council that it was better this way for all the parties involved and assigned Bronn a new land in the Crownlands.

The King had also assured them that with the Reach receding, the unrest that had ran through their lands after Sansa Stark’ careless move to bid for indipendence in the very same council that made her brother king would come to close.

At first many lords and ladies had not taken well the news they were to accept a sovereign from a now entirely separate country. Only the strain the previous years of war had put on everyone’s coffers and Bran’s near omniscience had inspired a wary, frightened sort of compliance.

The Greyjoy woman had at least had the common sense to wait until the council was over before taking Bran aside and stating that, if his North broke away, so it was right for the Iron Islands as well, particularly as she had declared for Daenerys and not a Stark.

Bran had granted her freedom, and Tyrion had felt sure that with the Vale and Riverlands so closely related to new sovereign, and he and Bronn keeping richest regions, the remaining discontent would die to nothing .

Instead now the crown holds one kingdom less.

Still, they were trying for a new way of living, and his claim on the Westerlands, despite his poor reputation, went unchallenged. Probably because the cousin he had appointed as his heir had a good sway on the lords of the West, and he made as few visits as possible to Casterly Rock, preferring to forget the altogether.

Tyrion sighs, rubs his tired eyes, and drinks. And drinks.

Tries to still his mind and focus on the little skirmishes between the Iron Islands and The North.

One condition for the Island indipendence had been for them to not reave the remaining kingdoms realms and find other sources of living.

The Iroborn, whose land is rocky and hostile to all but few species of fruit trees and cabbages, had taken to partially substitute piracy with hunting seals and whales to strike up commerce and crafting - that put them in competition with the North for sources, particularly as the nothern seas nowadays were an area of dubious jurisdiction.

Not that the Greyjoy queen cared about details like that.

Fortunately that is no concern of his, because he can’t imagine anything more fastidious than trying to ...

It strikes him suddenly the thought that once he would have loved the challenge of mediate that conflict.  
Once, that he would have not thought of it as a chore.

When had Tyrion Lannister, hand to three monarchs, became someone who hated politics?

Mind you his position is a joke , a token - there is no need for wits and council when your king already knows everything about everything. It is merely expected from him to keep up the appeareances and being a contact between the nobles and the crown, but there’s never any doubt about what should be done and how.

And that is good, is not?

Even if nobody knows if Bran truly feels much of anything.

Is not better a king who wants too little than a queen who wants too much?

 

“ Ask me in ten years”

He told Jon Snow right after... what they had done.

He thought then the answer would be clear far earlier, that time would have pat him on the back, erase any uncertainty.

He had felt such a bitterness and self loathing then , at Jaimie’s death.

The resentment toward Daenerys had not been a new thing, more like a silent current that been simmering inside him since the night he had seen Jon Snow exiting her rooms.  
He had truly believed for a time he was going to be a better men serving her.

Had set aside the whoring and the self pity to be dedicated to her cause completely, imagined a bright future with her at the center, the best ruler Westeros had known, and he the power behind the throne, his pragmatic cynicism a perfect counter to her savage idealism.

He had not ever dreamed she might return his feelings or even welcome him to her bed.  
His fantasies had not carried him that far.  
What he had asked of life had been just to see her to succeed, to be her partner in the ways that truly mattered.  
He had imagined her, married to a consort that would be a mere figurehead, while they took all decisions for the betterment of the realm together.

He had imagined tempering her fire with his reason, cherishing her trust like she was a goddess incarnate.

Then Jon Snow strolled in, took her heart, her body, her trust ... and that place he had dared to imagine for himself.

All what was left afterwards was his growing fear to be put aside, left with no future nowhere in the face of his failures in her eyes and the bridges he had already burned.

When Sansa Stark had thrown him a lifeline, he had caught it.

 

Speaking to Varys, he had half hoped the other man would come to the conclusion that getting rid of Jon quietly was the best solution. He had planned to protest a little, and let the Spider work his magic without his needing to get his hands dirty.

He had been surprised to see how fast Varys had turned around, moving in the opposite direction... and he had had to warn Daenerys, step in before she could truly come to harm.

And because he had saved her, she had the chance to ignore his plea, burn King’s Landing to the ground, cause the destruction that had claimed Jaimie ‘s death.

She had made him the reason of Jaimie’s death and then sidelined him, that’s what he had thought while she was giving her grand speech to her armies, when he had given her back his pin.

He had figured out he was going to die for that, given the mood she was in, but then Jon Snow, in all his smoldering righteousness had visited him, and he had seen a chance.

It is twisted, that even now, he feels a twinge of satisfaction at the idea.

The woman he had wanted, killed by his words, through a man she had chosen above him.

Maybe he truly is the perverted monkey his father always swore he was.

Ask me in ten years, huh?

If she had given him the time of the day, he would have done a lot better than allowing another man to tell him what to think of her.

If she had wanted him, or at least acknowledged him, he would have not celebrated her greatest accomplishment with a blade in her heart.

He could have forgiven, for the greatness that he knew existed in Daenerys Targaryen, the ruin of his family.  
Had he not already given Jaimie up, in many ways, when he had pledged himself?  
And Jaimie would have understood, because *he* did everything for Cersei, and he knew Tyrion, deep down, had always wanted to be just like his big brother.

 

What had Jon Snow given up instead?  
He could not even bother himself to make his queen welcome in his own home.

Could not hold her as she grieved, or bring himself to marry her when the perfect excuse of an unified claim popped up.

Insulting, truly, to think she had trusted him far above her hand.

Maybe Daenerys deserved her end after all, for burning the city he loved to hate, and all the miserable people in it, who had loved to jeer at the high born while wallowing in their dirt.

Just... at times when he looks back, remembers all what was accomplished in Essos, it seems a bit disappointing.

That little men get to cast shadows large enough to darken a star.

That those big dreams she sold him will never be reality.

That he never will be anything better than what he is.

Ask me in ten years?

They are just other words to haunt him.

Just like Daenerys ‘ face, like Shae’s, like Tysha’s.

 

Here, he just made himself sad again.

Who does need more wine?


	4. A Wolf At Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya Stark is a wandering wolf that refuses to ever set foot again in Winterfell. It is no longer home.

What is West of Westeros?

 

It turns it is something vaster that   mere sea- six months of a first journey discover nothing but more water, but Arya Stark was never one to be easily deterred by  hardship.

 

She came back empty handed at Westeros ‘ shores the first four times- her ship testing how far they could go without incurring in food shortage, mapping the skies... putting at rest a couple of mutinies, avoiding one spectacularly vicious sea storm.

 

She learned that with too much time far away from land makes men become different - some downright crazy-  that open sea elicits a special brand of fear, both when the weather is so still the ship is struck, and when it is so violent you are nearly sure you are going to die on the bottom of sea.

She learned that leading a ship, especially if you are a woman, is very much about keeping your head when others are losing it around you, and forcing them to keep themselves in check.

She learned that the sea is a stranger, giving nothing away, and that it makes her to feel at once powerfully alive and as powerfully close to her god as she was in the House Of Black and White.

The vast blue depths are both life and death.

 

What is West Of Westeros?

 She finds out at the end of the fifth journey : a smattering of islands with a  strange, dry but windy climate, sandy and rocky soil that gives nourishment to trees that grow twisted to not oppose the powerful, constantly hissing winds.

There are plants she has never known- some of them prove poisonous to the sailors that try to eat the fruits or touch the flowers.

What strikes her the most is the animals: a species of small sized, blue feathered falcons, pink birds that dwell near lakes with very funny nearly squared beaks, small monkeys that eat insects and move by night.

There’s people too, living there, their skin black as coal and their eyes pale blue or green, their hair always frizzy and various shades of brown, dwelling in cities not too different from the ones she left behind.

The language barrier and the hostility of natives are probably an obstacle she would have not lived to get past if she had not stolen a couple of faces and warged in a couple of birds to get a lay of the land.

She tries to establish a ground for future trading with one the local kings, but she meets a lot of resistance in convincing them Westeros is not going to move to invade them, now they are going to be on their maps.

Because it scares her that she can’t promise them that, can’t promise that Essosi slavers won’t target them too, she tries even harder to offer the protection of a formal alliance with Bran.

She feels like a fraud for it - the culture here is very different... each island is fractured in several indipendent states all allied through marriage, but all regions observe a nearly complete gender equality - women don’t simply fight or inherit land here, but they  are considered eligible to the same employment as men. Some states do allow the smallfolk to partake in ‘temporary ‘ marriages with the one purpose of  begetting children - lasting by contract from one year to ten.

Some families consider the woman as the head of the family, and not the man. Religious practices center around poisoning the initiates into ecstasy and  trances.

Westeros would not enjoy the islands and the islanders would most likely not like Westeros.

 

Still, Arya tries to speak her piece while she weights her options, tries until she and her crew are ‘taken in custody’ by local government. The kings decided to eliminate the problem simply not allowing the newcomers to leave. Ever.

They are imprisoned for months, and five of her men die in cells, struck by a ‘red fever’ native children apparently experience often with no issue.

Arya thinks of biding her time, stealing a face, stealing back her ship.

*They* know what she can do tough- they found her faces in the cabin, and now deem her a special brand of criminal, guilty of killing three of their own ( no matter if they attacked her first).

She has chains with heavy iron balls to both her wrists and ankles, and they never lower their guard around her. 

But she does not give up. 

Even through the rage and the sadness and the isolation of her cell, she waits for an opportunity.

She has nothing but time. 

Her mind wanders back, to Bran, to Sansa, to Jon.

It’s against her better judgement she hopes someone might come looking for her.

There are no weirdwoods here, no  eyes for Bran to see through.

He did not know what was west of Westeros neither.

He or Sansa might send ships after hers but perhaps not if they think her ship sank.

Would have Bran let her go if he had known she was not to return?

Certainly not, she wants to believe.

Yet he did let Theon die protecting him, even knowing from the beginning she was meant to slay the Night King - she is last to complain about Theon dying, but she does not understand why he did not hint the other man to just bide his time and slow down the ice creature. It might have worked out even better. 

He also had allowed Jon to march straight to his doom, but that was also a point Arya did not feel free of debating.

She was guilty too, of encouraging Jon in that particular direction, even if she had not wholly believed how much she would have succeeded.

She remembers at the beginning, when Jon came to Winterfell with dragons, a foreign queen and an army of warriors unlike any other.

She had snuck among the common folk, content in that childlike surety her favorite brother would have looked among thousand faces and recognized *her*, grown up but still Arya Underfoot somewhere inside. 

She had actually been stupidly disappointed when his horse went past her, and he turned to look at the Dragon Queen instead, leaning in to tell her something that made her to smile far too wide.

From that moment onwards, Arya Stark had felt definitely ill- disposed to like Daenerys Targaryen, although she would not admit it until much after.

Jon would just make it worse in the following days, split as he seemed to be between avoiding the other woman and staring after her with a look halfway between a longing and remorse every time she was not looking back to him. 

Arya had been ... tired and homesick and half- bitter that Winterfell no longer felt like home.  The pack was together at last, but nothing was going as it was supposed to. Sansa still had the mean streak of when they were younger, but her romanticism had soured into a chilly, biting diffidence. She was ... still Sansa, but she held other people at distance, in a way that suggested that her mind was constantly playing a game where she alone could be the victor. It was sadly evident her time with the Lannister’s had left a lasting imprint.

And the more Arya stood by her, the more she felt her inner Lannister emerging too - where else could have come from, that attitude that everyone but them was the enemy?

Bran was the worst tough- he did not even consider himself Bran Stark when she first met him, and only gods knew if he even considered them his sisters.

Arya had figured that she would feel more like her old self when Jon came back, but despite their heartfelt reunion she had felt distant from him too.

She had felt adrift, disconnected from that childhood she held on in memory with all of her, when she was in Bravos. Like she wanted to chase something whose name did not know.

The one time that sensation had left her had been her time with Gendry.

Maybe because he had known different parts of her, maybe because he did not expect anything but her to be herself, maybe because he was soft and gentle in all ways she was not without being weak.

She was glad he had settled up fine without her in the end - he had married the daughter of one of his bannermen, and last time  she had checked on him,  he had looked well, an affectionate husband and father, decently handling his lordly matters.

He was well liked, and he had the family he always wanted.

 

Thinking he was safe and well left her always with a bittersweet feeling.

He could not be the last man she took to bed, but he was the one she could have settled, if she had felt ever remotely inclined to be a wife and a mother. He was the sort of man who would nnot have minded her ways and she could have loved him.

She had never found the words to tell him she came back to Winterfell wrong too - her pack was fractured from the inside and she felt restless, caged, like she wanted just to roam free, fly away    somewhere nobody knew her, where she could be anyone and the past was only a shadow.

She had nothing to give to Gendry or anyone else anymore, outside a fistful of moments.

She had become the lone wolf that always survived but always wandered too, at the edge of other packs’ territories.

Well, this time she had wandered too far.

Jon...

Maybe if she snuck her way out of this one, she would go to the Wall and apologize.

For what exactly? For trying to turn him against Daenerys Targaryen?

Her judgment of the woman had been proved right, for the most.

But probably a good sister should not have felt like she had to make her brother choose between two sides of her family. Possibly she should have felt guilty or ashamed because even before that she had stood by Sansa in trying to convince him to renege on his oath of fealty once they had finished exploiting the Dragon Queen armies.

That had been dishonorable and dishonest behavior in itself... it had been a very not Stark thing to think or suggest at war, above everything else, a thing that went against all Ned And Catelyn Stark had tried to instill in their children growing up.

Arya did not want to think she went along with it only because she had felt like she had to press Jon to remember he was on *their* side. She did not want to think she had helped to ruin Jon’s life only because she had felt petty and insecure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. A Queen in Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa Stark is the Queen In The North. Life has more surprises than that for her- maybe she is to find again something she had lost.

Sansa visits the crypts exactly once a week, just like she remembers her lord father used to.

She leaves flowers at the feet of his statue, to Rickon’s grave, to the spots the statues of her mother and brother Robb she commissioned will occupy soon.

She sits for awhile with the memories of her childhood, with the rage for the bodies that were defiled and unreturned, with the sadness for a pack that dwindled and dwindled until she was all what was left.

She likes the idea someday she might sit there and not be sad, and she will have long silent conversations with her dead about everything they are missing.

It’s the romantic in her, stirring for a last breath of life. The coldness that lives in her bones cringes at the vulnerable sentimentality of the gesture and turns her away.

She never lingers too long.

She spends more time in the godswood, sitting in the grass by the spot Lady was buried, a large rock marking it.

She imagines Lady’s soft fur under her fingertips, so well it is a nearly physical sensation, and makes believe they are both back to a time they were young and happy.

Lady was sweet and she was goodand bound to the best part of Sansa’s soul in a way she can’t fully explain without sounding crazy, even to herself.

Sansa cant avoid believing that if she had lived...

But she did not, and Sansa is not so sweet nor so good anymore. 

 

In that spent, vacant space Lady’s ghost presence used to live like a cut off limb, something else grew, vicious and dark, angry and potent.

 

She felt it, although she had not recognized it for what it was, the day she fed Ramsay to his dogs.

 

She was so full of simmering, cold hatred that day, the fresh wound of Rickon’s loss turning her to nothing but ice and poison.

She stood there and promised to erase every part of that man as the dogs circled him. 

In her hatred, she had wanted to see his horrible face giving out under the angryfangs, had imagined it into such a detail and with such a fever that it was a little thing, that sensation of slipping, edges blurring until her anger became a bottomless hunger. And more.

 

It slipped into Grey Jeyne ‘s memory of being a puppy, wetting herself under the booth of her master, her ribs aching from the kicks she had already received. Of Red Jeyne’s restless anguish to be left weak until she was released for the hunt, to be forced to run after her meat when her limbs and mind worked against her. Of Kyra’s distrust at the touch of hands that could tease her but would smack hard over her sensitive ears if she nibbled at them in warning. 

It slipped into Helicent’s dismay to be often hit with a wood, and Willow’s definite dislike for ... everything basically, and Jez’s unfulfilled yearning for affection. Sara ‘s fear of two-legged creatures, twisting her submissive nature into anxious aggressivity.

 

Somehow her hatred became theirs and theirs became hers. They blended, a strange comfort blooming from minds entwining, a pack following and a wolf commanding.

Sansa felt for a moment strong and whole and avenged, wounded and healed, powerful and consoled, sad but strong.

She was the bitches and they were her, and she was tearing him to pieces with her theeth and he deserved it.

 

Later, she shook off the sensation like someone who comes awake from something half nightmare and half a dream.

She did not believe those wisps of images that ran through her mind as nothing more than fantasies.

 

But she refused to put down the dogs when it was suggested to her.

 

Instead she fed them herself, petted them when they took to welcome herwith wagging tails and wet tongues that looked for her hands.

She spent warm words on their shiny clean coats of black fur and recovering health.

 

The bitches reminded her more of herself and Theon than of their previous master, so she was somehow satisfied of seeing them thriving after being mistreated for so long.

 

And maybe she liked to have someone to show affection to, on occasion, and if that sensation of slipping returned, a warmth kindled and shared, she thought little of it. After all, she had far bigger concerns.

 

It was only twonights afterJon left to assist the Dragon Queen in taking back King’s Landing, she had a disturbing dream... 

She dreamed of Willow’s warm comfort in dozing off nestled between Jez and Sara, Grey Jeyne nibbling playfully on her ear.

Helicent sat apart from them, and wailed a sound thick with longing.

There was suddenly a nostalgia for open spaces cutting Sansa’s chest in half, the yearning for a race... it All bled away into the eagerness for the coming hunt, the excitement for the prey, a vivid scent that eased the hunger twisting in her belly ... a woman, naked, and Helicent jumped onto her, half despair and half wild joy, ready to devour.

 

Sansa came awake suddenly, nausea and horror suffocating her.

 

She nearly threw up, and swore at once she would bring Helicent, if not the whole pack of monstrous hounds, to be put down. Better yet, she would give the order and never look upon the beasts again.

 

Only with that certainty in mind she could persuade herself to come back to sleep. Eventually.

 

In the morning light, naturally, her resolution had looked very silly, the response of a child to a night terror, of a little girl recoiling at a ugly reality she had failed to accept.

She resolved to let the dogs be and just avoid the kennels.

 

The bitches were used to her by then tough, and they missed her.

 

She dreamed of puppies wailing, crying, lonely.

 

She came awake every time with a sadness she had not known since her mother died, cleaving her chest.

 

She set it all aside.

 

 

Then, when they were preparing to leave for King’s Landing, Bran, who apparently, truly saw everything, decided to enlighten her.

 

“ You should repair the bond with your dogs before we go. You don’t want to see them cagey enough to attack the kennel master while you are away.”

 

And because Sansa hated not knowing everything, what followed was a very long conversation on warging, how it worked, bonding with specific animals, and how it was rather difficult even for an experienced warg to tamper with an animal whose mind was bonded very deeply to a specific person.

 

Sansa had been half horrified and half satisfied that she had possibly made the Bastard Girls to eat the Bolton Bastard, especially as it was more accident than design.

In light of Daenerys Targaryen bear leveling of a whole city through a dragon she controlled, mystical bonds looked especially dangerous.

 

But what was danger to one person, was power to another.

 

Sansa had learned to never waste an opportunity when it presented.

 

So she went straight to the kennels and allowed the bitches- even Helicent- to lick her face wet.

 

When she returned, without Bran, but with excellent news, she took care to apply the advice the received in training them better.

 

Now she always found the time of hunting with the nothern ladies of her court- and she took the dogs with her, spurringthem to see as prey other sorts of animals. She allowed them to accompany her when she went out riding, feeling a wonderful sort of safety at the idea the massive hounds, now healthy and muscular, would quite efficiently rip to pieces any bandit who dared to threaten her.

 

It was liberating to know she was not entirely dependent on her guards for protection. That if ever another man dared to raise a hand to her, she could count on a seemingly docile pet to turn into something lethal.

She was teaching Sara to circle the feast table during banquets, playing at looking for scraps, while she instead aptly went to listen to conversation, Sansa’s mind collecting useful bits and directing her.

 

Sara already knew to rest where the most gossiping among the servants happens. 

 

It has proved a surprisingly useful source of information, even if it started as both a game and an exercise of focus. 

 

Sara is affectionate and obedient, the most willing of the hounds to be taught new tricks - she likes the game of learning, and being useful to her mistress, and being able to demand to receive extensive cuddling and head scratching in recompense. Despite her size and pounds of all solid muscle she is stillrather fearful of new people in the castle, and fear still makes her growly and ready to bite and rip. Sansa actively restrains her and guides her the most even because of that, but there’s no denying she is her favorite. She even lets her sleeping in her rooms, when the air promises thunderstorms and Sara very deliberately goes to hide there before she can be brought back to the kennel for the night. 

 

If Sara is the sweeter and trainable of her canine companions, Willow is the most willful and cruel.

 

She always leads during hunts and ill-bears being petted unless she is the right sort of mood. She is very frighteningly good to read human body language tough, and her sense of smell a constant wonder even for a dog. Sansa would never guess human emotions had a scent that lingered- fear especially.

Sansa keeps her close and vigilant when she is receiving petitioners, and allows her senses to entwine with Willow’s - it is easier to understand what game is being played if you have the whole picture of who is speaking to you.

 

Helicent is curious and active, and she will not long for hunt as long as she is allowed to run after her mistresswhen she goes riding, or trail after her in court. Her curiousity means Sansa has usually a pretty clear picture of everything unusual that happens in her castle, to the point the servants think of The Queen In The North as some omniscient, intimidating creature. 

 

Red Jeyne and Grey Jeyne are the largest and strongest of the pack, but they are surprisingly sociable now they are well cared for. They are the ones who accompany Sansa when she visits Wintertown or more distant locations, and their noses and ears catch every detail of their surroundings. 

 

Jez has a terribly short attention span and willbe mostly lay lazying about before the fireplace or in the yard unless she is directed otherwise, but Sansa loves her anyway.

 

They are not Lady, and Sansa will never be the woman she might have been if so much pain and loss had not touched her life, but those dogs still somehow gave her back something she thought she had lost.

 

Life is moving forward. It is not perfect , and it is still difficult that Arya decided to leave and Jon went to lose himself among the wildlings but... there’s a flow to everything that makes her to feel like she can finally breathe.

 

The Ironborn are a problem that she will trying to resolve, and she has plans to improve the economy of her kingdom by mining timber and aiding the breeding of sheep.

She is pressing Bronn for more advantageous trading with the reach, and then... she promised her bannermen she will marry in two years’ time and no less, because her first concern is stabilize the kingdom. 

 

Of course she is merely biding time - she will need heirs, but she wants to be sure to pick a man whose character will reserve no surprises, and no attempts to usurp her authority.

 

Maybe a Mormont- she legitimized three bastards from a cadet branch of the family so the line won’t die with lady Lyanna and one of them is likely to be a good candidate.

Men of Bear Island have good reasons to respect women in power.

 

And she would like a daughter with Lady Lyanna fierce spirit and the Starks’ long face.

 

For all that she cannot say she is eager for the marriage bed, she finds the thought of her body someday swelling with life , ensuring her family won’t die out, is one , if not happy, at least... nice.

 

She can never have back the innocence or the pack she lost, but other children will someday play and learn where she and her siblings used to. More Stark children will run across the severe halls of Winterfell, and life will be... good again. 

 

 

 

The North is free.

And, finally, so is Sansa Stark.


	6. Author Note, Spoiler Alert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alert for potential spoilers about the book series ending and the way it upset my writing process.

So I have been reading rumors on Twitter according the which GRR Martin was upset with the tv show  ending because they took the notes he gave them about his intended ending and... twisted them.

 

 

Apparently the scene of Jon killing  Dany was the result of D&D deciding of cutting out part of Cersei’s storyline and giving Dany part of that, leaving to Jon to fulfill Jaimie’s part.

Cersei was supposed to lose the child she was expecting and go batshit crazy, and Dany would level out King Landing in a bloody battle against her that was way more equally matched than anything we saw onscreen. Jaimie would go to kill Cersei, and Dany, after realizing she lost  all those who came with her  to Westeros in pursuit of the throne, including Grey Worm, would decide to return to Essos and order Drogon to melt the Iron Throne in grief and regret.

Jon would stay to rule over part of the kingdoms ( The North still would secede) and make Jaimie his hand because he wants Jaimie to kill him if he ever passes a limit.

Soooo ... it seems when they decided to cut out Cersei’s insanity they gave it to Daenerys instead.

 

All of this does not make much sense to me, narrative wise, but maybe it was going to be truer to the characters.

 

Whether it is a true spoiler or just a rumour, it kinda upset me enough that I remained halfway through Dany’s chapter of the story- the next one.

 

I think I will finish it when I am less angry, unless I decide to split it into two parts. Just know I have not abandoned the story.

I just want to avoid writing anything that will user me more.

 

 

 


	7. Death and Resurrection Of A Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whereas Daenerys Targaryen is dead, and then she is not.

Everything comes and goes in waves, as the cool water laps at her body - that feels battered, broken, in need of that relief.

 

The pain that slays her is the memory of a blade that cuts into her and her eyes disbelieving as they looked up to the face of the one whose love she had all but begged.

 

It is the face of an almost sister, almost best friend, almost certainty right before she is to die in the same chains she swore she freezes ger forever.

 

It is the ghost feeling of her loyal bear falling, dead, and her cold hands grasping at him, desperate.

 

It is Rhaegal falling into the water and she unable to help him, unable to freeze out the realization the blame was entirely hers- the lack of sleep and food made her forgetful, unaware, capable to forget about the fucking Iron Fleet.

 

It is the thought of Viserion’s sweetness gone from the world, forever, an ache that dug inside her chest as a constant punishment.

 

It is the feeling of a whole abyss opening up inside her as she sits alone, surrounded by a crowd that celebrates for and with everybody but her as she grieves. Whole a lifetime of wandering as a beggar from city to city and she had never felt as much as an outsider as she sat there, watching men congratulating another man for her successes, her advisors suddenly distant and incompetent, and that new fear spiking and blooming in her chest as *he* just smiled, half apology half embarrassment. She knew then things could go wrong very fast- one wrong word to the wrong person and she could go back to be the scared little girl running from hired knives.

 

 

The pain always drowned her, but then another wave soothed her, the forgetfullness taking hold of all she was. A scent of lemon blossoms, the elusive sense of warmth for a home she never found, and Daenerys Targaryen forgot who she was.

 

Peace consumed her senses, and she floated away from all the sorrow. 

 

One moment she was a nameless child playing in the streets, right before a red door, two baby dragons of the size of cats gently crooning at her as they asked her attention, snouts brushing her bare feet. 

 

One moment she laughed and laughed in pure bliss as she rode a grey horse in endless plains, feeling free and young and without a care in the world.

 

One moment she thought she could glimpse a castle ( just like Dragonstone but so full of white and full of light, and Dragonstone was ... she could not remember) and a woman inside there, who looked much like her, but older, waiting. Waiting for her.

 

The woman who was nameless felt pulled in all those directions at once, but oddly, she felt like she could be able to follow all those pulls, all those strings of peace, at the same moment, in the same breath, and be better for it.

 

Mended, Healed, Whole, instead of broken and splintered.

 

And there was not a child somewhere, dark hair and a dark haired father, in a tent, somewhere?

 

She almost followed, happy, that feeling of contentment and belonging to all its different sources.

 

Was it a matter of a moment, of falling backwards and escaping the pain, the torment of lying in the freezing water with grief devouring her?

 

Was it the secret in the letting go?

 

Something held her back.

 

A weight in her chest and the wailing, distant but broken hearted of a infant, pulling at her from a whole other direction.

 

Don’t leave me, it seemed the wailing hammered into her head, and she wanted to weep and forget and be left alone.

 

Her peaceful dreaming crashed, a scent of flowers and greenery and heat enveloping her senses so completely it left her confused, bereft, lonely again.

 

There was solid ground under her, and light, overwhelming her sight right before it was filled with vibrant color.

 

Suddenly she was on a beach, trees and flowers framing a path at the edge of her vision, and so many butterflies swarmed over the pale sand, their wings glittering in the sun.

 

“ It is not your time yet, Your Grace”.

 

Dear Missandei stood in front of her, a child in her arms, eyes of a delicate lilac and the promise ofthe trademark Stark long face.

 

“ I don’t want him”

 

It was all she could say.

 

She did not want some brat who would grow up to look at her with the same suspicious accent of Sansa and Arya Stark. 

She did not want a constant reminder that she was killed, unloved, betrayed.

 

Once, to be mother again was some impossible dream she would have cherished. 

 

But to be mother like this tough - it felt like a corruption, a taint.

 

To even think she had died with Jon Snow child in her belly felt like a physical offense.

 

He had taken everything from her.

 

All she had ever had to build herself around was her name, her legacy as last Targaryen- he had torn into that hard worn history of her without even trying or caring, and stole it.

 

If she had forgiven him that, out of love, he certainly had proved he did not meant giving anything in return.

No love, no companionship, no family.

 

A Stark was all he wanted to be, and Stark men just had clumsy pity for their unwanted aunts.

 

She did not want his son.

 

She wanted back her peace, and hewas already taking it away.

 

“ He is yours tough, Your Grace, won’t you take him?”

 

The child face scrunched up like he was to cry again, and he looked so miserable for the way he pressed his little lips together, like he was trying to hold all the anguish in the world in.

 

Just looking at him Daenerys Targaryen, First Of Her Name, Queen Of No Kingdom, felt remorseful and all more broken. But she felt also all the weight of her years of striving to getsomething that was never hers to have in first place.

 

She wanted to embrace Missandei and forget.

 

She wanted to take the child and tell him it did not matter anymore, because the sun was rising at East finally, and she was supposed to be free.

 

No more pain.

 

Could not she take Missandei and the new baby and go at the house with Red Door?

 

Maybe they could all rest there. Just a bit?

 

She was so tired, she felt like she could sleep a thousand years.

 

She wanted to go home somewhere, finally, but the baby made her to feel so sad, she felt like she was back to Winterfell, in that feasting hall where she had all the sorrow of the world frozen inside her.

 

And all she could think it was she had no home.

 

Nobody wanted her nowhere, nobody loved her or missed or needed her, and even this new child would surely hate her, like his aunts, or find her disgusting, like his father in those days before...

 

 

Why had she ever thought he would want to rule beside her? 

 

He had made clear he did not want her.

 

He did not even share her vision for the world, he just wanted the war to be over so he could come back to the North.

 

But she had not wanted to leave him behind and with the throne of her ancestors finally in her hold, she had felt such a clarity of purpose,such a renewed sense of confidence that everything was possible.

 

She had thought of conquering Essos, ending slavery once for all in honor of the friend she had lost.

 

She had thought that if she married him, maybe she could show him that building a new world was possible, that eradicating corruption at once from a failing system could be better in the long run.

 

She had wanted to recover that feeling between them they had shared so briefly over the boat.

She had wanted to share her dreams with him, despite everything.

 

And he had killed her.

 

She wanted to weep.

 

She wanted to be in the water again.

 

But she felt fire, inside and out of her, flames and sounds of chanting destroying her little world.

 

The sky was caving in.

 

“ Take him. You would regret leaving himhere, if you go back.”

 

Missandei pleaded, teaching to put the baby in her arms.

 

“I won’t go, and I don’t want him. I don’t want anything. I won’t love him”

 

She insisted, even with the persistent feeling she was lying, and rebelling some truth older than time.

 

The child wailed, like he knew he was being rejected.

 

Daenerys felt the fire inside her burning brighter, saw her surroundings to ripple like the edges of a dream.

 

She acted out of instinct, and reached for the baby, caught in a sort of unexpected terror he would fade away along with everything else.

 

Holding him tight against her chest made her to feel strange, sad and happy and scared, but warm and full too, in ways she was not before.

 

She had been silly.

 

The baby was not a stranger, climbing in her body to destroy her more.

 

He was innocent, small and hers.

 

A miracle she had not believed possible.

 

Still she was sadder for the sweetness that blossomed in her, because the baby was also half of Jon and half of *them*, those who had ruined her and everything she ever worked for.

 

Missandei smiled at her, her image blurring.

 

Daenerys almost reached for her too, wanting to freeze the moment , to grasp at last tendrils of this strange dream.

 

She held the baby tighter as she felt a new weakness cutting through her. 

 

She felt like she was waning, her very body twisting out of shape.

 

And the baby... where was the baby?

 

—-

 

Daenerys Targaryen comes back to lifewith a chocked grasp, her body feeling at once too tight and too warm.

 

There’s chanting around her, and the room is dark, full of candles.

 

She is lying on a stone surface, and there are many dressed in red around her.

 

Her heart aches, her skin is heated in ways that for once make her to mind the hot temperatures.

 

She longs for something out of her reach, something she can’t name at first. 

 

Her senses fight to make a sense of everything- she was with Jon, and then she was not.

 

He stabbed her to death- and that alone looks like it should be a trick of the mind.

 

He told her she was his queen, now and always.

 

Jon was good and honorable.

 

Why would he do that to her?

 

And then other images flood back, and she recalls the sheen of tears in his eyes as she faded away from him, and she knows somehow it is real, it really happened.

 

He gave her to Death.

 

And Death was sweet to her, maybe.

She recalls the touch of it like a kiss of seatide, the ease of dreams blending together and apart, and longing claws at her breast, powerful.

 

She could have been at home.

 

Instead she is in what looks like a temple of the Red God, with people she is not inclined to trust, who will surely will want something of her.

 

Who will be willing to discard her too, once they got it.

 

Too bad she is not up to giving anything anymore.

 

Has she even left anything to give?

 

Has she even a chance to regain back ... the throne ? Has her nephew seized it?

 

Daenerys sits upright, gestures to the priest advancing closer to stay back.

 

She breathes in, breathes out, blocks outside the fear, the sadness, the black despair that wants to pull her back down, inviting her to long for ease of resting, to miss the solace of nothingness.

 

She thinks of a child she is afraid to believe in.

 

 

She forces herself to remember who she is - not the brittle thing Westeros tried to turn her into, not her father’s daughter, someone who falls apart after a measly betrayal to the hands of advisors that were always less than her, part of the wheel she meant to break.

 

She is The Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt. 

 

When she falls, she rises stronger than she was before.

 

She rises and rises again.

 

She will have from the priest all information she can and then....

 

If there’s no path for her to walk , she will make one.


	8. Dragons Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon, in losing himself, continues his journey inward.

“ How areyour balls not rotting yet? “

 

“ Just shut it , Tormund”

Jon sighs, tired if anything else of having the same old conversation every week, if not every few days.

 

“ Val -“

 

“ I won’t hear a word about Val”

 

He spits, this time with more fire than the other man expects.

 

“ But-“

 

Jon gets up,takes the bow and decides to go hunting, alone.

 

He does not spare his wildling friend a glance.

 

To say the truth, Tormund insistence all his problems might be resolved with fucking is more insulting than annoying.

 

It has been a year he is with the FreeFolk- but he thought he had made pretty clear from the get go he meant to keep true to one part of his vows. No wives of any kind, no children ( no lands, no crowns, no homes, no families).

 

He had left the Wall because he was sick of Westeros, Ill at the very idea he would end his days among black clad brothers, more of the unwanted and disgraced sons of the realm. He did not want to look at the evidence that things in the realmwere not going to change.

 

But his penance? That he had accepted. 

 

Tormund could think it was all very romantic, the idea he had wedded himself to his grief and remorse for Daenerys and that eventually he would allow another woman to soothe him. To give him a flock of sons and daughters to make him smile again.To make him happy.

 

Tormund can think like that because he has a simplicity of mind and soul andand a twisted sort of sentimentality but Jon ... knows far too well by now he is a very different kind of person.

 

Happiness looks to him as the natural outcome of being able of living according your beliefs, and hefeels after what he has done he would be not able to live with himself, if he made ofhimself the kind of man who can do ... what he has done and reach for a free life regardless.

 

He does not want Val. All her persistent pursuit of him accomplishes is making him wary of her presence.

 

He does not want to want her or any other woman in their camp.

 

Once he liked to imagine a son to call Robb- now he finds a strange comfort in knowing no part of him will live on when he is gone, feels a sinister sweetness in knowing for certain there will be no more Targaryens. 

Daenerys was always the true Last Dragon anyway - nor he nor Rhaegar could usurp that title whenshe wears it so well.

 

The most vivid picture his memory has of her is that last day, herstraight back as she comes toward him and Drogon flies upward behind her, giving her for a moment the appearance of having a couple of wings herself.

 

She once told him Targaryens believed they would be transformed in dragons after they died. For her, he believes it actually possible. 

He even prays for it some nights, when he can’t sleep, and all he can hope for is that she is well, and free and magnificent and at peace in some other world.

 

Most of time he feels he has not much right of thinking of her, especially with love or admiration or any other feeling than remorse.

 

He killed her, he made it so her brilliant spark was extinguished from the world.

 

He made her last weeks to feel evenworse in an already bleak situation, and deserted her when she was most in need of support.

If she was sick, he certainly did notlift a finger or speak a word to ensure she would receive any care.

 

Last month of their relationship was cold at the best.

 

No, he doesn’t deserve to warm himself to the flame of her bright memory.

 

Still, it is how he can tell he truly loved her, in hindsight. 

 

Now he can admit he was wrong about everything, that he looked for honor where there was none, that he was confused and adrift and left other people in charge of deciding how he felt and thought at the most critical time of his life.

 

There were days, those first rough months he could not accept the thing he had reduced himself to, or understand how he came to be here, he doubted everything.

 

He questioned whether he had ever loved his silver queen, if this was why he had allowed himself to be swayed so easily.

 

Then he would remember Ygritte - the way she made him to feel, she who was so brazen and unapologetic and certain about her place in the world in years he was struggling to make his own.

 

Ygritte taught him of courage, of what it was being truly alive. When she died he swore himself he would never love anyone the way he loved her, than it was impossible to love someone more.

 

Yet he had chosen honor over her too- he had determined to leave her behind, never truly even contemplated changing his life plans around that first young love. He had not killed her but he had not acted to preserve her life neither.

 

And today he lives among the wildlings himself he can tell maybe back to then he thought he was somewhat above Ygritte, for his upbringing, for his goals, his attachment to duty.

 

With Daenerys he had felt a bit of the opposite, at least at first.

 

She was this incredible gorgeous creature who was strong and willful and good, with a temper and an idealism that matched his. Every inch a queen, a pillar of granitic strength.

 

He thought himself miraculously lucky that somehow she too seemed to see in him something worth of her interest, desire, love.

 

Even now he cannot contemplate how or when he lost that feeling.

 

They had something so pure at first,it was still strange to think how fast it had collapsed.

 

And it was unreal to think he had plunged a knife in her heart. Because she had frightened him with that talk of more wars, and the unapologetic iciness in her eyes at all that blood on her hands.

 

He made himself her judge, and then he had murdered her, leveraging her trust in him.

 

 

Well, now he could judge himself too because he had nothing but time to think over his actions.

 

All he had set out to do was to prove his birth did not define his lack of value ... all he discovered in pursuit of honor was that you did not need to be a bastard to act like one.

 

 

Not a nice picture , is it ?

 

Jon wishes he could pinpoint the exact moment he lost the man he wanted to be. It had to be before he killed her.

 

Was it when Sam told him about his true parents? Had it really taken so little to shake his sense of self, to turn him into a weakling?

 

Once more it does not feel possible, yet it has to be true, because Jon has no other explanation for the way he acted.

 

Or maybe he was always this way, and he never noticed until the truth of hard facts dissolved that shield he had hidden behind.

 

Is he a cold man after all, who cares more for faceless strangers and ethical principles than he does for women he claimed to care for?

 

If Sansa or Arya did something unforgivable, would he turn against them too, just as easily?

 

Is this the sort of man he is?

 

 

He no longer thinks he knows much about love.

 

When you love someone, if it is a feeling good and true and authentic, does that mean you should put them first , their care above the care you have for yourself and the things you want for your life? 

 

 

 

Should not Daenerys or Ygritte have mattered more to him , if he truly loved them? More than this idea of doing the right thing at all costs?

 

There isa line somewhere he cannot see?

 

There’s something lacking in him, if he was more worried with his moral judgment of Daenerys than of her well being, those days she must have had a need of someone?

 

What is the point of loving anyway, if it can be swept aside so easily, if it fails right when it should endure?

 

What is the point of honor if it turns you into a bad man? Or is it the truth that he is so far gone he cannot tell the honorable thing from the dishonorable one until after he has done the deed?

 

He will not trust himself ever again to tell the difference, but he wishes he had never extinguished Daenerys fire from the world, that he had followed his heart.

 

That he had given more to her, if their days were to be numbered. 

 

Then he might have the consolation of remembering the good times among the bad ones and perhaps feel entitled to mourn her.

 

Instead he has nothing left but the awareness he failed her and himself in every way possible.

 

She did deserve better, no matter what she might have done or how he might have felt about it. He wishes he could have been the sort of man who gave her better.

 

But wishes are dead horses riding you nowhere, and penance is all he has left.

 

Funny, how the more people insist to give him a free pass the more he feels like carrying the weight of what he has done for the rest of his life isthe one way he can even aspire to redeem himself.

 

So yes, he can actually tell with absolute certainty he is * never * going to want Val and the brood of imaginary wildling children. 

 

He does not want to ever, even imagine this exile as a life he might enjoy.

 

He wants to be left alone and free to end his days brooding, remorseful, dancing to the idea at least he had not sunk so low to build an happy life over murder.

 

It is bad enough to know Arya and Sansa did want him free, walking out of this tragedy as immaculate as actual snow.

 

Like the Starks became the new Lannisters, just as corrupt but with a coating of hypocrisy on top.

 

He has already lost everything he has ever caredto hold. Why would he want to lose even more?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. The Slumbering Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys moves her first steps to come back to her true self.

At times when Daenerys wakes up, she wakes up angry.

 

Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Varys.

Sansa Stark. Arya Stark.

 

She sees their faces so vividly even with her eyes still closed, like she just left a dream they inhabited, even if her memory is a dark, blank room of night terrors and fury.

 

Those days she will carry the anger with her, breath in, breath out, through her whole daily routine.

 

It is easy, when everything in the temple makes her to feel like all her triumphs and the battles were washed away.

 

The clergy and the devotees are respectful and at times reverent of her, of course. They call her Queen, hero, bride of fire.

 

She is fed, assigned guards of the Fiery Hand, led through rituals to cloak her existence from the new usurper, the three eyed raven.

 

She is given fine dresses in Targaryen black and red, jewels that they swear are drenched in protective and healing magic.

 

She receives the visits of initiates that want to fill her with questions about what she remembers of the ‘ other side’ and discuss eagerly holy scriptures with her.

 

Kinvara, who has the benefit of being an exceptionally intelligent, charismatic and perceptive woman with a steadying firmness of character,says it is a good sign she remembers. That only the pure can return from the death and still withholding some shadow of what lies behind.

 

That she is favored in the light of their Lord.

 

Daenerys listens, even accepts a few invitations to witness the rites, allows herself to be educated while she waits for Greyworm, who was warned of her resurrection through shadow magic, so her survival can be kept a secret until she is protected again.

 

After her sad experience with Jon, she dares not to contact Daario when she is so vulnerable.

 

She cut her hair, honoring the Dothraki custom, to remind herself of how far she fell.

 

She was so close to have her whole life work completed and now... she is back to exile, to relying on the protection of strangers, to start over from nearly the scratch.

 

She has heard Daario had put downan uprising from a few slavers families as soon as the rumour of her assassination spread. That even now the Targaryen banners stand over Dragons Bay.

 

 

Daenerys wonders if the people who called her mhysa cried for her, or have already forgot her.

 

If public favour is not fickle only among the Westerosi.

 

She has asked her guards to teach her to fight, despite her condition.

 

The vulnerability of her unarmed body scares her now- she wants never again to be so defenselessthat a man needs only to get close enough to kill her. 

 

Still, the Fiery Hand warrior discipline is of a brand that allows not to separate the spiritual practice from the physical, and her pregnancy is not something she can risk with strenuous labour.

 

So she is tasked with meditating in a room full of perfumed smoke, most of time, to train her senses to open and discern her surroundings in the fine nuances of sound. 

 

She is taught to scry flames for answers, to make herbal oils by boiling recipes to protect the body and tinctures to poisoner knives.

 

She is taught to hide small blades in her clothing, to aim at a target with sure hand from varying distances to aim to knees and joints when sparring to make the opponent to fall down before disarming him.

 

A great part of the Fiery Hand fighting technique seems to be based on anticipating enemy moves and find the right angle to break knees or ankles so your opponent will be forced to the ground and made vulnerable to kill or disarm.

 

She is somewhat abysmal at everything for now, but she likes to keep her body and mind busy.

 

It keeps the memories away, and the grief for her fallen from filling her heart.

 

When she is not angry, she is sad nowadays, a melancholy so deep and unshakable it would will her to sleep the morning, the evening, the whole day away, if she was not to fill her schedule with things to do to the brim.

 

At times when she thinks of her child she feels a distrust she can’t quell, and at times she feels only the anticipation to meet him, to hold him, to love him. 

 

Finally she is going to have a piece of family, a heir, to call all hers.

 

It feels nearly too good to be true, in the middle of all this ruination and yet... last time she thought something too good to be true, with his father, it had turned into a nightmare so quickly.

 

She instinctively recoils at the idea of living through something like that again, but then the sensible part of her speaks out, reminds her it is only a child, innocent, her blood, who will depend on her for love and safety.

 

 

It is hard too, to think this pregnancy was paid for with Viserion’s blood.

 

It makes her to feel guilty at the elation she feels at night, when her fingers will trace the curve of her stomach in wonder, and rest there as if she hopes the child can feel her too and reach back.

 

 

And then there’s her living nightmares, the flashbacks she will occasionally get through the day of herself on dragonback, spurring on Drogon as he chases gaunt, dirty women and children through narrow and filthy alleys.

 

She feels awful about that now, even if anger was all she had place for at the time.

 

She wanted vengeance, had not felt like the surrender was enough, was deserved relief. Not after Missandei.

She had wanted to see that cursed city and everyone in it to disappear to dust and ash, and this was exactly what she had pursued.

 

And what about the peace she had felt afterwards?

 

She is not sure how she can reconcile with herself what she felt andthe image of children burning. 

 

It feels like there should be a divide there, like she should have not found any satisfaction so soon after that sort of price was paid.

 

But King Landingand Westeros in general has made nothing to make her to feel like those people were her people, and that abrupt divide in the end had proved fatal. 

 

She had seen only enemies to destroy, where Tyrion and Jon had seen countrymen and countrywomen, lives to be spared as much as it was possible.

 

And maybe this should be telling her something, is it?

 

While she still blames those two for their treachery and hypocritical rationales, she has to admit that divide lingers in her heart even now.

 

Westeros is a pit of corruption she had planned to cleanse throughly, but she feels such a revulsion to the concept of ever returning there again. Truly, even when she had thought she had won the throne her first thought was for Essos.

To use the Westerosi militia to take the free cities, to end slavery everywhere.

Her vision for the future had returned to her, for the first time from her nothern experience, and that alone had calmed her. 

 

If only the fantasy of setting foot again in Essos had made her to feel like home was a breath away, maybe she never should have left.

 

That thought too, came with too heavy remorses - so many of those close to her had lost their lives for the restoration of her legacy, and it was all for nothing, it was maybe something it should never have happened at all.

 

When she is most full of doubt, Drogon is her greatest consolation.

 

He flies never too far away from Volantis now, like he fears she mightbe snatched away if he does not check on her often enough.

 

Their bond is stronger than has ever been, and he seeks her affection and petting like he did not since he was small and new to the world.

 

She wants to ride him again, fly with him over the open sea, feel the closeness of him having the space to call her palace his home.

She feels the love between them like a tether, constant and strong and pure and fierce, grounding her down in her misery, melting away the shades of her fear for the future.

They made it through disaster together. He saved her from final death bringing her here, guarded her body - his loyalty alone brought this miracle forth, and she is is humbled, grateful.

 

The priesthood of the Red God might be devoted to her for their own beliefs, but Drogon’s only reason was filial, enduring, stubborn love.

 

He alone did not fail her, of those who were with her before.

 

They grieve his brothers together, when she kisses his huge muzzle and cuddles against his scales in the evening hours, their minds so attuned her remembrance and his own move so in synch she can’t tell who started them down the memory lane.

 

 

That moment of clarity after her taking of King’s Landing, the sensation of purpose settling over her like a protective cloak... the solidity of having her future open and bright before her... she wants them back.

 

Now all there is uncertainty.

 

She forces herself to have patience, and hope.

 

Greyworm is going to rally her blood riders, and come back to her.

 

She is going to have her child.

 

Someday she and Drogon will live in a new castle, and she will have the throne room open on a side so he can curl up beside her if he wants , near the throne while she holds court. Her throne won’t be made of swords, and she will have gardens full of lemon trees to walk beneath.

 

She will fly with her son when he is old enough, and she will have a bunch of stories to tell him about the which she does not need to be ashamed over.

 

He will love her back, and she won’t think of his father as she holds him.

 

She will forget Jon Snow, who turned to be weak when she needed him , believed him to be strong.

 

She will forget Varys and Tyrion, who spoke big speeches but were in the end small men, reaching only for a puppet ruler they might control.

 

She will obliterate the memory of the Stark sisters, whom she does not even believe intelligent enough to realize it was wrong and foolish to use her armies and demand to give nothing in exchange, to her own face.

 

She won’t leave those days she allowed her saddened soul to forget its pride to haunt her forever.

 

She will make strength out the ashes of this treachery and a brighter beginning from this ending.

 

She will prove herself to be stronger than *them*.

 

 

 

She won’t feel so sad or so angry forever, and the fear that lives in some corner of her mind, she will vanquish somehow.

 

If she has made mistakes, she won’t languish over them. She will atone instead, and for every child she has burned she will deliver a better future to a thousand children.

 

She will forge herself into a good mother and a better queen.

 

She is not the same woman who left Essos but there are also parts of herself she did not knew herself before.

 

Before, she was so focused on building peace, redeeming her house, restoring it, proving herself to her people, to her allies.

 

She wanted their respect and that stopped her hand at times when if she had not listened, she would have secured important victories.

 

Today she knows those who truly understood and supported what she stood for never had any need of persuading.

 

Today she knows herself to be a thing of destruction, turned to an higher calling. She understands with an entirely new clarity that her idealism has a dark side: there are lives she won’t ever consider worthy being, much less sparing.

 

Her willingness to do what it takes to reach a new world can be her strength or her downfall, and that will depend partly on how wisely she picks her court, and partly on how well she will know to balance out the scales with compassion and benevolence.

 

 

Robert Baratheon ‘s indulgences bred corruption, the cruelty and selfishness of the Lannister regime allowed it to fester.

 

Her one moment of lacking empathy resulted in mostly purposeless genocide.

 

Those are all points where she can guard herself from falling on the same sword, in the future.

 

She does not fear this new usurper- Stark dutifulness and near omniscience are going to be almost necessarily a poor substitute for a genuine vision of the future, or a sincere vocation toward ruling.

 

It reassures Daenerys that she still feels those things within herself, despite everything.

 

THIS is because she thought she was going to be a great queen, when she was given the chance.

Not because of her lineage or dragons, but because she had this love within her for a world that did not yet exist, a world she wanted to bring forth. Jon and Tyrion had not taken that from her.

 

She can see it more clearly than ever.

 

She used to think Jon was like her, because she had seen his strugglesto always do good by his people, his rigid and uncompromising attachment to duty and honor, so apparent when he had refused to lie even to Cersei when they needed.

 

But that rigidity, in hindsight, had turned into exactly the reason he had failed to understand her.

 

He has to have looked at her and seen only someone as power hungry as those conniving beasts of the south ( so like his sister Sansa, amusingly enough, a fact he was willingly and enduringly blind to) in those last weeks after she asked to keep his silence over the truth of his birth.

 

He could have worn a crown with some grace, and did what he thought he was right by the realm, but in the end he lacked the interest and the passion to understand the intricacies of ruling, and handling the power of it.

 

It occurs her now she has never truly known what he truly wanted out of life, outside ofhis propensity to allow responsibility to determinate its course.

 

Their romance had flared powerfully and passionately to life during that boat voyage, and she had felt caught in that beautiful sensation of finding finally a match where she was equal to her partner on near every level. She had seen in him a man who was good, and treated her with the utmost respect as queen and as woman without fearing to challenge her when it was necessary.

 

She had thought of the world of his integrity, considered him so uncompromisingly honest to be above betrayal and perceived what was blossoming between like a rare flower, pure and untainted.

 

The world had looked like a better place because he was in it.

 

But as soon as he set footto his frozen homeland, most of the qualities and the closeness she had so valued faded like some fanciful illusion.

 

He seemed indifferent to his own sisters or friends slighting her openly, and so worried with keeping the favor of his own people and family he was careless or indulgent.

 

He dismissed her concerns, verballyslapped her with the revelation of his birth parents at the less opportune moment and acted with utmost indifference to what that secret meant to her identity and dreams of the future.

 

Her pride had demanded she did not show any care for his own feelings over the matter in return.

 

Maybe in another life she would have enjoyed sitting with him in her chambers by the fire, making him to share in the history of their house and inspire some belonging in him.

 

She would have liked to not be last Targaryen, found some comfort in the idea he could have children at least, and their house did not need to die.

 

Instead her heart had rebelled the very idea he would snoop in and take everything that was hers- marry another, give her Targaryen children to sit on the throne she had sacrificed so much for.

 

She had looked down on how dismissive he was of the whole thing and thought he did not deserved the claim or the bloodline.

 

Maybe if she had set the pride and the anxiety aside and forced him into one honest conversation over the matter, things would have turned differently.

 

The Jon she thought she knew would have not... told her he would keep the secret just to break his promise as soon he could - she thought he would have either refuse to promise anything of the sort or kept his mouth shut after he had promised.

 

He would have not put a blade in her heart neither, after telling her he was loyal.

 

Or... had she seen in him only a reflection of something she wanted?

 

Was he so fickle or two faced he could be two men if occasion presented itself?

 

Or maybe in truth she had never known him for real , and the honorless hypocrite who had stabbed her was his true self.

 

Well, he gave her a child, if anything else.

 

Daenerys wanted to think she could move past it all because of that alone.

 

She had a child she never thought she could have, and she had to focus on the fact without Jon Snow and the war against the dead she would have lived without that particular blessing.

 

Jon Snow would apparently live out his days at the wall, and if the gods were good she would have no reason to see him again.

 

She could let go the dream of him like a price she had to pay to get here, even if she would have preferred do without the renewed usurpation of her throne or the assassination.

 

The only path was forward, and the past held no definitive answers, only more questions.

 

If I look back, I am lost - she thought with a certain irony.

 

The trick was, as always , to keep moving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Embers In The Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daeron is born and Daenerys lives and learns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is coming late, but I really struggled with writing it the way I wanted. Thank you for the continued support to my reviewing readers - you inspired me to not give up so this chapter is wholly dedicated to you!
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

Daeron Targaryen is born in the right middle of black moon night, a most auspicious time that will gain him at once the moniker of ‘prince of shadows’.

 

To Daenerys, who was awoken by birthing pains and suffered six hours straight to bring him into the world, it is said that he proved himself to have a fine and healthy pair of lungs from the moment was washed to the moment he was given back to his exhausted mother arms.

 

Of those first hours with him, she will remember ever only the overwhelming relief to be able to have a living child- red faced and animated, a little face twisting fiercely in discontent, an hungry mouth latching at her breast with hunger.

 

She will remember being awed at the miracle of life, at the magic of a little being that lived inside her body for nine months and now is so real, so perfect with his tiny lashes and little fists, wrapped in linens, warm and breathing and moving against her body.

 

Her son, finally.

 

He has her heart completely the moment his eyes- a dark purple-meet hers in a resemblance of a scowl.

 

She has the strangest sense her whole world is ending and coming together at once. She has a son.

 

For a precious moment nothing else matters , and all she wants is to be worthy of being a mother, to be able to care and protect him the best of ways.

 

She tries to stay awake as long as she can just to look at him, to take in everything , every detail of his first day in the world, but her body is weak and she has to ask for her baby to be taken away, she is too afraid to drop him , or to hurt him.

 

 

—-

 

 

The first days are nearly perfect, if not for the first bouts ofthat assail her. 

 

Daenerys can hold her Daeron and feel everything is perfect. 

 

He is her joy, her home, her life.

 

She is constantly pulled apart from wishing she could have him always like this, tiny and flawless and safe, gurgling happy in her arms, and the lookingforward watching him to become a man and do all sorts of amazing things.

 

 

She feel complete and at peace when she is tending to him.

 

Her past is only a shadow, her future nearly irrelevant, as long as they are all together, she and Daeron and Drogon, a family at last, unconventional but true and hers.

 

It is enough, she knows suddenly at the core of her, even if this turns to be all she can ever have - a life as a ‘ refugee’ to the temple, an eternal exile to Westeros, a simple existence of days stretching into each other where she is only a mother.

 

But then her eyes turn away from her living children, and she remembers all the weight of her name, of her legacy. 

All her desires and ambitions are still part of her.

 

She is still a woman in a world that seems determined to kick women into a place of submission and non-existence. Whores, wives, mistresses, slaves- the difference is not as marked as it might seem.

They are still seemingly all coerced to fight thooth and nail for a space where they can be a person, where they are not hostages to men who feel usurped by their autonomy.

 

They did not see that before Westeros. As a queen, she had felt secure in what she had conquered. Her titles, her armies, her allies, the raw truth of her own self.

 

Varys and Tyrion had their games of shadows upon walls, and she had her terrible strength and the uncompromising purity of her own idealism, that were as much her power source as her dragons.

 

She never considered people could just choose to ... deny her, let their shadows to play upon her and cast her in a role that was not hers. She never dreamt those games could push her to the brink. Yet it haunts her, the memory of her time in the North, of being pushed in a corner, slowly being made powerless while others pulled the strings of her ruin. 

 

She still did not understand how it happened. 

 

And if she does not understand the past, is she not doomed to repeat it?

 

She has not much in the way of allies or support to leave to her son.

 

If she falls, he will be left with no guarantee of a future.

So more now than ever in her life , she needs to not fail. It is everything or nothing.

She is afraid of everything nowadays. Greyworm still has to come back to her, and her complete dependence on the temple unnerves her, brings her too often to memories of her childhood, of Illyrio ‘s hospitality and what followed. Birth made her body weak and her moods volatile.There’s a fragility that haunts her, makes her brittle to nightmares of Jon’s eyes and a pain that tears her ribcage in two, the ghost sensation of chocking on her own blood. It was terrible, that betrayal, but truly it was only the epilogue to a long, miserable fall that started with the fight against the dead.

It is no longer the monsters that stole Viserion thatfill her with horror when she closes her eyes. It is the living, the certainty they can make the world full of ugliness and danger so much more than literal walking Death.

 

It is the thought she might kill them all until Westeros is a graveyard and her kingdom takes shape from ashes, the yearning to be Mhysa to her people once more... to have her own people, the children of her new world, where women are more than facilities for pleasure or breeding, and people cannot be made into things. Where life has its own dignity, and death has its purpose to defend that. 

 

That dream has always burned in her, but never so brightly, so powerfully.

 

She sees so clearly its necessity now- she died because those closest to her were too much of a part of the old system to break away. Tyrion who proved himself a Lannister to the end, Varys who built his luck upon using other people power by manipulating them, even Jon who was molded in the struggle of proving a bastard could have honor and worth.

 

But then, she could swear she was different before. She thought she would never go so far to cast away mercy.

 

Instead she found out that once she was pushed to the brink and all she had was the blunt force, there were lives she could take without regret. The lives of the ones she did not respect or value.

 

 

She used to think her new world would come about by the way of high ideals and compassion. In Essos, a land where blunt force ruled, that had made a powerful counterbalance to her occasional ruthlessness.

 

In Westeros, a land where hypocrites were used to hide their true intent to get what they wanted and misconstrue truths as it suited them, it seemed the one alternative to be a puppet ruler for one’s council was to be an all out tyrant.

 

Westeros was corrupt to the bone... even now they had supposedly created a new ruling system, they chose to follow a king that had no interest or ambition in government and they named him ‘the broken’ as if the most important part of him was the fact he could not walk. The fact he was physically harmless, in appeareance.

 

Bran Stark, for whatever reason, allowed it. 

 

Daenerys thinks of taking back what is hers, in fire and blood.

 

Of burning every Stark until her son is all is left of their house.

 

Her rage at being reduced back to the exilefeels limitless, a river ready to overflow at any given time.

 

But then she holds Daeron, who starts looking more and more like a blend of Stark and Targaryen features and she doubts everything.

 

The shape of his face is much like hers- he has her exact forehead and chin, but the nose is all Jon.

 

His eyes are nearly indigo, but the cut of them was much like the oval , worlfish shape she recalls seeing on lady Lyanna ‘s statue face.

 

His cheekbones have all the promise of Stark sharpness.

 

Bad enough she will never trust Jon again, and her son will never able to have a father. She is not stupid enough to not predict that Arya Stark alone would be more than capable , if she knew of his existence, to kill her and take her child to her brother, probably thinking herself some noble heroine while she was at it.

The other Starks... well, she could expect more of the same variation on theme. The day they knew she lived, they would surely move to put her back into a grave, and if they ever decided to spare the child on the account of his Stark blood, they would plan to have him raised away from her influence.

 

She could never afford to have that possibility to manifest.

 

More than anything she wanted to raise her son away from war and away from the Starks. But unless she gained back her place, they both had nothing. Everything in her recoils at the thought of wandering with her child from city to city like she had with Viserys after Darry died.

 

The despair that claws through her soul those days can only be soothed by prayer.

 

She does not pray to Rlhorr tough. She prays to her dead through the flames, to Missandei, to Jorah, to her mother, even Darry and Ser Barristan. To Viserion and To Rhaegal. 

 

 

 

She prays that they could reach through and lend their strength, their counsel. 

 

The focus required for scrying the flames calms her, if anything else, and there were a few scant episodes where she could feel a whisper of scales against skin, Rhaegal soft hissing, Viserion’s humming song.

 

She would pin it to her imagination if not for the feeling of power that lingers in her soul afterwards, the quiet sustaining strength of her children carrying her in a flight that is not physical but it is just as real, beyond her fear, her pain, her anxiety for the future. 

 

 

There’s a sadness in her that lingers, calls her to contemplate the peace she found in death. She tries to not listen, to not sink back into the deep fascination she felt during her pregnancy, when the possibility the birthing bed would prove her last undoing did not seem so terrible.

 

There is much she has and wants to do before finally giving herself to a final rest.

 

She wants to know Daeron has a secured future, her dreams a true fruition .

 

She wants to feel more happiness at watching him to grow, collect memories of them as a happy family of two.

 

She wants to know she will be never helpless again, that nobody will be ever able to strip her name and essence from her. 

 

She wants a whole palace with red doors and private gardenswith lemon trees where she can play with her boy. Safety, stability, a life she can enjoy full of all those blessings she has never known.

 

Magic and power and understanding of the unseen so she will never be weak and taken by surprise again. 

 

Drogon always there with her and Daeron, every step of the way, because he will be always her first child.

 

There’s enough wants to keep her going, but some mornings, before she can actively choose them, to number them, to make herself strong against temptation...

 

Death is a siren that whispers of sweet nothings and consuming sleepiness, an hazy reminder of uncomplicated hours that would become endless, limitless.

 

The end of fatigue, worry, fear.

The promise she could easily choose to not concern herself with growing old and lonely in a land where she is always only a stranger.

 

She has nightmares of Daeron growing up and hating her, leaving all alone, reneging her as a mother, stabbing her in the heart like his father, speaking to her in the voices of Sansa or Arya Stark , with disdain and coldness.

 

She always cries when she wakes from that sort of nightmare, feels a pain greater and deeper than anything she has ever known.

 

It is terrible, to have a child and love him so much he could destroy you without as much as trying and yet to realize you might never wish any sort of harm upon him, not even to defend yourself.

To know beyond certainty you can never harden your heart against such a weakness, because he is everything and his safety matters to you more than yours. 

 

 

She thinks of Jon those moments, of how she did not feel alone for a first in her whole life, how she never imaged she could feel so intimate with someone she had barely met, of the fire between them that did not feel like it could ever be extinguished. She thinks of how easily it all turned in a bizarre , reverse contrary- of how alone she felt toward the end, of how she let that aloneness to make her to forget who she was .

 

Before, she longed for love. How she considers she is not sure she can afford it. 

 

She has her son. His birth already absorbed so much of her desires , of her very capacity for feeling, like every dream and consideration of herself she ever had suddenly were squashed in some secondary corner. She loves him so much he has always to come first.

 

It is somewhat tragic all of this makes her to realize nobody has ever felt like that toward her. She never felt like it, anyway.

 

And it is all right, finally.

 

If anything her fortune taught her that what matters to her is to have a purpose, to give her life a meaning without having her cause to be transformed into a ruse by those who would use her.

 

She can handle whatever is thrown to her as long as she remains true to her self.

 

And a child of her womb - is something pure she had stopped hoping she could have.

 

It is not enough to be driven by the future - she has always to remember to be grateful for what she has in the present.

 

She has to learn to look back without flinching- no longer a rootless girl, but a queen that built her fortress in herself by trial and error. A woman who owns herself, who no longer depends on others to build her up or down, who is not frightened to remember her downfalls.

 

She is both the Breaker Of Chains and The Queen Of Ashes, the daughter of gentle Rhaella and mad Aerys. She may have inherited scraps of both of them, like her Daeron will inherit from both her and Jon, but she still hopes to make the best of it.

 

To be her own person, no longer defined by the shadows of her forefathers.

 

She will never be the woman she was before heading North, but day by day breathing is becoming a bit easier, getting up from bed in the morning is less of a struggle with the voices in her head and more of an automatic mechanism-to put one foot before the other and go through the motions of living.

 

 

She still aches under the ashes of her old life, her old dreams, her old self but she can now see there will be another life ahead her, and so much is yet possible. 

 

She is not missing a day of training with the men of the Fiery Hand, and the mental discipline is starting to give its first fruits.

 

 

She is starting to have some intuitive grasp on the magic of fire, if anything else- there’s something in it that she senses so alike to the most intimate roots of her whole being. Fire is Will, Strenght, Passion, Life unextinguished and unextinguishing, and yet a bringer of death, pain, and truth. Its nature is dual, vexing, as deceptive as it is honest and forthright- it is believed that fire tempers but tests you as well, and those who are able tolook into it with no vanities and no self deception will be able to contemplate the mysteries of the world with as much transparency as the purity in their souls, but those who behold it with the smallest impurities inside will be driven to death and ruin with furious haste.

 

Daenerys pours her late night hours over old tomes looking for the reason she doesn’t burn. They call her Bride Of Fire in the temple, because of it, and it is like they are convinced it means something. They call her the Destroyer Of Corruption for the blaze she set on Kings Landing, look at her with awestruck eyes when she is not looking. Like their god molded her for some special purpose she won’t reveal, and she does not trust it but she has to take that awe and work with it, given the circumstances.

 

She wears her titles with the renewed conviction of someone who is studying the magic of names, their power to shape destinies.

 

She is determined that when Daeron is named in the light of Rhllor, she will give him titles to make him strong in this difficult life that opens before them. Just like her mother made her strong with her last breath.

 

She is going always be Stormborn first and foremost, after all, and when this storm too has passed, who can tell who and what she will be ?


	11. Chapter 11 : Broken Hearts , Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Weight of four years is heavy for Daenerys, Jon and Sansa.
> 
>  
> 
> Let’s start with Dany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking up : it is finally canon from Benioff ‘s own mouth that Drogon was bringing Daenerys ‘ body to Volantis and that he burned the throne because if she was not going to sit on it , nobody else should, in his mind.
> 
>  
> 
> So it is not a stretch to say it is canon that Daenerys is going to get resurrected, in any fictional universe.
> 
> Let’s cheer to this since it is the one positive we have.

Four years pass in a blur for Daenerys- the unsullied return to her, called back by a shadow sent by Kinvara to Greyworm, and they return with about half of Daenerys old khalazar, the part who they could rally before it dispersed and assumedly came back to the Great Grass Sea.

Daario comes to her before of that, the look of a lost and half grieving man on his face, that stir in Daenerys heart memories of Jorah, and a guilt that she could not love him even if she took his loyalty. Daario is in some ways the opportunity to not make the same mistake twice- she feels she might make herself to give him what he seeks, to bind him more securely to her, to have someone who feels like familiarity and safety instead of passion and danger.

But that is not the path of the Dragon.

Her heart remains one unyielding thing, a golden fortress echoing with old pains but brimming with feral heat for her sons, and a mad yearning to destroy her enemies.

She cannot make herself to love Daario, even if she wishes she could , even if it hurts her to seeing him pour all his devotion to her feet.

He has held Meereen for her, threatened vengeance when he thought her lost; by putting a stop to all commerce between her city and Westeros, by financing piracy to raid Westerosi and nothern ships that came toward Essos.... and his targeting of her murderers made Meereen richer, able to withstand any attempt to bring back the old ways. Daario came to Volantis as soon as he hears of her second life, eager to prove himself to her, again.

He comes when Volantis gives itself to the Dragon Queen, bloody riots instigated by the red priests leading the slaughter of all old nobility and all families involved in slavery. It is almost worse than the burning of Kings Landing in a way- the bloodshed, the screaming, the brutal nature of the executions- like lifetimes of hatred just exploded at once . Former slaves sang across the streets hymns to freedom or to the red god, knives in their hands, while houses burned, and mutilated corpses littered backyards waiting to be set upon a pyre.

The freedmen call for Mhysa, who remains in the temple cradling her child, mindful of Drogon who flies restlessly above the sea, eager to return and take her and Daeron away.

Daenerys receives from her people a crown of white gold and rubies engraved with dragons, a throne of ivory and Crisom velvet, a villa with luminous cream walls and red painted doors and a luxuriant garden with all the manner of exotic fruit trees and flowers ( it belonged to the richest family of the city, but it becomes a gift, a gilded cage where she and Drogon and Daeron might turn in a nest, of only she accepts to protect the city, to shoulder all her titles once more).

Daenerys puts aside her misgivings and takes her rightful place - queen of Volantis, Bride of Fire, Mother of Dragons, Scourge Of Evil, Destroyer of Slavery, Defeater of Death. 

She feels a prisoner to her titles, even while she sees they are now a way for people to recognize they put their faith in her.

She tries to see those titles as a promise ( despite the fear and tiredness and the grief that still haunt her ), tries to accept the love of her people without seeing in it a noose.  
Her nightmares are made of the freedmen turning against her,eventually executing her and Daeron like they executed the rest of the city old nobility.  
Drogon , her only safety, responds to her fear with a short temper and a overly vigilant attitude- taking to circle about the city, the villa or the temple whenever he is not hunting, never staying too far away from whenever she and Daeron are, even while he feels stifled and cornered.

Still, her patience is eventually rewarded.

It is almost shocking how fast her fortune turns, once news of her return spread across the Bay of the Dragons. 

With Daario and his militia, she has the Meereen protection once more. With the joined forces of the unsullied and remains of her old khalazar, returning to her side, she has a way to keep the order in the bay, and implement a system of changes in the political structure of Volantis.

She is Queen of the Bay and her title is to pass to her son eventually, and to his firstborn son or daughter after that. Her cities will have a council of the people elected year by year to rule aside a ‘minister’ that is for her to name or unname, responsible for the implementation of her laws inside the city and for reporting week by week to her directly for the city affairs. Slavery and marital rape are outlawed, forced prostitution is condemned as sexual slavery and punishable by death, as every other form of slavery, and so the administration of brothels that wish to remain falls to the elder worker there by obligation. Public schools are opened in each city under the administration of red priests , and are responsible to make sure each child of a freed man is made able to read, count and learn a trade. 

The Faith of the red god is named the official religion of the bay , but every religion is allowed temples and freedom, although the orphanages too, are put under the control of red priestesses.

Daenerys herself is counted as an initiate too, now, and she spends much of the time that is not absorbed by the ruling and reforming in the study of magic and participation of rites.

Little Daeron grows healthy and lively, being taught tiny nudgets of the Dothraki ways with the horses by her bloodriders, and of fighting from her unsullied.

He has his lessons and plays with other children in the temple, and is always surrounded by friendly faces, and yet he looks more mature than she would like for his age, and yearns for more of her time than she is able to give.

For all that she wants to protect him, and ensure for him a future, she feels often somewhat remiss as a mother, and for all she makes certain to always spend with him all the time she can, she can feel he is lonely too.

Drogon, too always carries a sadness about him she knows well, a sadness to be last dragon, the only survivor of his nest siblings, and the anger too, that while his mother could have a child of her flesh and blood, he will never able to.

It’s largely for him Daenerys spends hours scrying the fire for the location of more dormant eggs, and specifically eggs that can hatch a female dragon. 

She offers a bounty too, for anyone who will bring back to her any eggs, but it seems to come to nothing, and all she sees in the flames is the face of her mother Rhaella, her voice calling to her to come beyond the fire. She sees Viserion and Rhaegal too, singing for her.

And so she goes, forgoes sleeping almost completely in order to spend most of the night staring in the fire, her mind slipping through it to return to a shadowy place where her beloved dwell.

Rhaegal always welcomes her with a purring slithering of scales against her skin, and her mother is a fragile wisp of warmth that envelops her like it could protect her from every evil. Like Rhaella knows what has happened to her daughter and what she has become, but Daenerys is forgiven, loved anyway, and in that endless tenderness covering here there’s a mute prayer of protection, of healing, of peace and restoration.

Viserion feels always cold, an icy touch that grazes Daenerys as a kiss of frost, but careful and eager and sweet too, the way he was when he was younger, like Death restored him even as it damned him to keep an echo of his last days in the world.

When she is lost in the fire Daenerys feels full of love, safe and clean and untroubled in a way she never feels when she is caught in the reality of her daily life.

She finds always Rhaego there too, forever an half formed thing that falls in her arms like a stone, a dark shadow that yearns for her womb still, and for the motherly care she never had a chance to give him.

She cradles him with ghost limbs and kisses him with ghost lips, and it is the strangest feeling, because she cannot see him, only feel him.

Drogo is someone she finds only when she falls deeper and deeper in a trance.... she sees him as a black stallion rushing through a field of too high grass, upon an endless plain as dark as the night that meets a starless sky... his sleek coat shines in the dark , and when she races toward him she is a girl once more, tender and sweet.  
He becomes a giant of a man who takes her in his arms ... and she feels all of his love for her crashing like a sea wave over her soul- a thing that in equal parts a violent, adoring ferocity and a gentle desire of giving her everything in the world.

She basks in his love, feels herself glowing with that youthful innocence she barely remembers possessing.

She is a girl and she is a woman there, upon that silent plain- she is the moon of his life and he is her sun and stars. Nothing else exists.

At times her form shifts and turns until she is a silvery dragon flying low upon the ghost grass and he is a stallion pitch black and powerful that she chases with joyful elation. When she snaps her jaws and grazes his neck or his back from above, everything shifts again- she is a girl and he is a man, and they fall upon the grass together, lips that seek each other in burning hunger and the joy of an unexpected reunion.

 

More rarely it happens that the flame brings her somewhere else entirely- a place of formless terror that contains vague impressions of a dungeon or the red keep- her father lies there , either a young man broken by rape and torture, or an old relict of a king lost among the nightmares of his mind. 

Aerys can insult her or threaten her, and only once upon a miracle he breaks into sobs when he sees her , fingertips reaching for the edge of her gown like a supplicant, and he begs for a comfort she is unable to give him. She wishes occasionally for the words to console and mend him, but there’s a presence that blocks her when she reaches for her father, fiery and resolute, and draws her backwards and out of the place altogether. It is how she knows the Lord of The Light truly has an interest in guiding her somewhere, somehow. Or at the very least the god watches over her journeys in places of the otherworld she drifts toward , without knowing how or why.

 

The vivid intensity of her visions at some point always brings her out of the trance, no matter who finds her or what she is doing... and she will discover herself giddy and alive, refreshed despite the loss of a large part of her nighttime hours.

It is always hard to fall asleep for her, afterwards, and more and more often she just has a cup of wine and awaits the dawn of a new day reading reports from her cities.

Every morning before listening to the petitioners she spends time with Daeron and Drogon, knowing that most likely she won’t be able to return to either of them before the evening.

She has Daeron brought to her so they can break their fast together and she can hear about his morning at the temple when it is manageable, and she is careful to save one hour at least to fly away with Drogon toward the open sea or far away lands, so he will unwind a little.

Whatever time is not absorbed by her being a mother or a queen she spends training with the priestesses and the fiery hand.

Her body has grown strong, her reflexes sharp, and she fights with an economy of movement that aims to deliver the most damage in the least time available. She has asked to learn to use the whip and the arak the Dothraki way too, but she is still far from proficient at that.

There’s not ever enough time for everything she needs to get done.

And so by day she pours herself entirely into her queenship and her motherhood.... and keeps the nights for herself, to fall in her mother arms, to play and cuddle with her lost children ... to wander back to memories of Missandei that suddenly turn in phantom days spent chasing butterflies on a beach as the free little girls they never truly were. 

 

Jorah and others who used to support her she never seeks, too afraid of rejection, too ashamed of how she let them down.

And Jon... and she looks for him often, almost needing to know he is suffering still, somehow, for what he has wrought. He is beyond the wall, free and yet not, and among the wildlings, apart from the concerns of the world, he looks serene even in his sadness.

It makes her to bristle, to see he has some peace now, even if he grieves her still.

She can not understand why he hurt her, or why he deserted her, why he has rejected what it was for her the dream of a perfect life.

He loved her at a point. And then it was just gone, that love, as soon as she needed to rely on that, as soon they needed the strength of it to get through their ugliest moments.

 

She has so many questions, and yet she cannot bring herself to ask them.

She has loved him.

She still loves him a bit every time she looks upon Daeron’s little face and is so happy he exists, every time she cannot avoid longing for what-ifs.

If only he had chosen differently. They could have been a family, and it could have been so perfect. 

How can he not feel the loss she feels, was she really so wrong about him....?

Nothing makes sense if she thinks about it, and she should just stop tormenting herself. She should stop looking for him, and stop remembering him. He let her go. She should follow his own example.  
But she cannot, and there are moments she hates herself for it.

He is happy where he is- he feels free now. How can he feel free after he killed her?  
Did he feel so little, had so little consideration for her life, that he could live easily with her murder?

Because he lives, he cannot see her when she scryes the flames for him.

She will usually see the texture of his days seeping through her fingers like sand, taste his little joys and his little sorrows upon her lips, scenes of his life playing before her eyes , when she is scrying for him.

And in all of that, she will find anything but the answers she longs for. Just more questions, more torment.

He does not miss her.  
But he grieves for her.

He is happiest beyond the wall in his simple life, as she is most satisfied with her essosi life as mother and queen.

But he is a wide gap, a missing part in her heart. Why is she not the same for him?

And so she is surprised when one night, as she is pulling back from him with half-grief for their not-love and half-rage to herself,  
he reaches back for her, to keep her in their strange waking dream.

“ Don’t go”

He says, and she is so surprised, because the spirits of the dead never speak to her, and the living never see her.

She is shocked enough that she does not move.

“ Don’t leave me” he repeats, but his eyes are hard and dark, and she cannot read them.

“Should I not? You left me. A thousand different ways, a thousand different days”

She remembers her anger at him, as she says that.

“ Did you even , ever love me?”

She asks, and her voice is full of tears.

“ I did. I did not think I would ever... love somebody like that after Ygritte. It was a too sharp pain when she died, I did not think I was able to... give himself away again. I thought I would have always remembered the pain, and guarded myself against the possibility. But then I met you, and it was natural as breathing, loving everything about you. Every moment I fell deeper and I could not even find the words to tell you. I have tried to show you tough... in the beginning, before we came to Winterfell. Then it was like I lost the words for everything and anything. I lost me too. But I loved you . You were everything. You were everything even when you ... have done things I could not look past. You frightened me. What you had done, what you wanted to do, and what you might have asked me to do to stay beside you too. I did not know what I had chosen to do until I was doing it and, believe me, it does not mean it did not hurt when you were dead and your blood was upon my hands. I hated myself and I hated what I had done. I hated what it made me. But how could have done anything different? If it was between you and my sisters....”

His words are carried upon a low, flat, monotone, but his eyes are forlorn as they rake upon her face, like he is begging her to understand, to see.

She cannot.

“ I was not going to touch your precious sisters!”

“ Even if they refused to give away the North?”

“ You had bent the knee to me! It was your place to make sure they would follow your lead! And it was not only the north in the end, that Sansa wanted to take from me. She pressed your claim on your behalf, and yet it is me you would make into the villain. Again.”

 

That, more than anything, cuts her deep. It is not even a choice for him - he is still so ready to take his sisters ‘ side that he is resolute to look past all their wrong doings to blame her solely.

She would have tried sparing them for his sake, even if it was a weakness. The fact they knew it and they could see he had no such loyalty to her left her vulnerable. They exploited it. He allowed it.

If he had put his foot down with them, things might have been much less ... risky.

“ I just could not live with being responsible for their death and you were... different. I could not reach you, and I could not dissuade you from the path you had taken. But I loved you. I know I did. I miss you still. I wish it could have been different.”

“ How do you know it could not? You never even tried!”

He shakes his head , and his expression crumbles, pained.

“ I could have tried. I should have tried, and I should have handled everything better. I failed you, and me, and the life we could have had. You had lost so much and while you were suffering I was thinking only of me. I was angry at my father... or uncle. I wanted to think the best of him. I did not want to think that he had let me go to the wall without telling me the truth. I did not want to think that maybe he was protecting his friend Robert as much as me. I thought I had figured out how he felt about me, and suddenly nothing was clear. None of his motivations or of his actions. And all of my life I wanted to be a whorty son to him. I did not want to think he was not my father. I did not want for two fools who caused a war out of pure selfishness for parents. It was a mockery of anything I dreamed up when I was a kid. I did not want my love as my aunt . And when I told you about the truth of my birth, I did not want to see you being worried only for your throne and my claim to it. I wanted ... I did not know what I wanted when I told you that. But you were the first person I wanted to talk about it with and you... you made me to feel like Sansa and Lady Catelyn used to. Like an usurper, who should be ashamed for existing. I was so angry with you about that, but I did not want to be, and I told myself it did not matter. And soon, soon I found I could not talk to you at all. About anything. How well that went over, in the end? I loved you and I killed you but you were lost to me long time before that . And it was not only my fault, the way it went down. I wish it was . Then I might just wallow in my guilt . Instead you are gone and I miss you, and there are so many things that should have gone differently all our hopes look impossible, looking back. I wish the North had accepted you and I wish I had found a way to force it, but it did not feel important, back to then. I thought only of Great War. I was a king who did not care about politics and thought the so called game was all an exercise of inanity... that only should have told anyone that I was not a great candidate to any throne. But it went as it went. For what is worth, I am sorry. I wish you could be here for true. I still feel you in me all time... and you were so... bright before I brought you to North. Even if I am grateful you came, even if we never could have done without you, I wish I had never asked you to come. Because if I had never brought you to Winterfell... all your dreams could have come true. You could have been a great queen and I... will be never not sorry that your life ended like it has. You had known such a pain, and humiliation and loss , and it was all in my home. At a place where I promised you safety and love. I have done nothing to spare you. I- the man who said who loved you. The man who loved you. What was my love worth to you in the end? I gave you only loneliness and judgment when you had most need of me. I was wrong, and that can make no difference now. I have to live with what I have done to you every day, and I have to think you no longer exist because of me. I have died- I found nothing there. It scares me, to think of you nowhere in the world. But that is my fault. I have chosen what I have chosen.”

 

All he says seems to echo through her and leave bruises. She is struck numb and silent, even while all she wants is screaming.

He is sorry and it is not enough. It heals nothing, it fixes nothing.

She is sorry too, for everything.  
She too, had been too involved in her own concerns to have care of his feelings - apparently at least, and despite the fact she cannot quite put their respective actions and their results on the same level.

She cannot refute he had his right to be angry with her - Daenerys herself has wished she could have reacted differently to his surprising revelation. She remembers how he had looked at her then - the hint of challenge in his gaze as he named her brother for his father. She had felt shaken and had been unable to interpret it anything than an attack. She had thought it was pride that drove him to speaking to her like that then - she had imagined the bastard boy who did not know his mother’s name perking up at the idea of being the fruit of a royal marriage. Because to her, the girl that had for a decade nothing but a true born , important name - that had been everything. 

She had never even considered that the bastard boy who had lived in a household where he was not fully accepted, had only ever wanted her acceptance. 

She had not meant to hurt him that way , and certainly she had not meant to reject him to the extent he could bring up that particular comparison.

It did not justify anything rl that happened, but it served to her as a reminder of how little they had managed to comunicate and being aware of each other other in those far away days.

It had felt like it came from nowhere, his abandonment, and later his betrayal, but instead they had started slipping away from each other inch by inch , nearly as soon as they had come together.

They were finished before they had even a way to begin.

They had a spark, but it had soon flickered off to a dying sparkle , in the absence of nourishment .

She is still angry and hurt about what he has done- maybe she will always be but now... now she feels defeated too, a ship with no wind to her sails, because she realizes her demand of an explanation is only a fight for a victory that can never come.

He will never give her a good enough reason , and she will never give anything to him that can make him to not see her like a monster.

She will never be able to trust him with their child- never able to tell him about Daeron without fearing he will take their boy away from her.

 

They will never move past this one, and they will never get to be a family. 

Daenerys can say nothing.

She fades from him little by little, but it is not until she hears him calling for her - “ Dany! Dany!”- that she realizes it.

She is startled back into her body, trembling, her mouth dry.

Her cheeks are wet with tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘ Broken Hearts’ is going to take nudgets from actors interviews on how they played their roles and try to squeeze out of that the basis for a coherent narrative. I for one are no fan of Ygritte/Jon, but Kit apparently said that Jon will never love anyone else like that, so I wanted to address that, even if he said it because he is married to the lovely actress that played her.
> 
> Similarly Jon and Sansa POVs will address points of Kit and Sophie perceptions of the finale, but the direction of my story will remain unchanged. I simply feel I should start from there to build up.
> 
> I am leaving Jonerys to a pretty bleak point here, and I will try to explain how Jon came to the point Dany finds him in his part of Broken Hearts. But ... from this point onwards, thanks to their respective Magics they will keep being part of each other life even if they are pretty physically and emotionally distant.
> 
> This is where I will start repairing their relationship so in a way , and what will eventually bring them back together.


	12. Broken Hearts, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa’s side of the story, four years in her kingdom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According Sophie Turner, Sansa would live her life as a queen never marrying or having children, simply dedicating herself to her rule, and having a long and peaceful life. 
> 
> That in the context of Westeros is rather unlikely. Let’s count all reasons why.

Four years pass slowly for Sansa Stark, first ruling queen in her right to the North.

 

The glamour and appeareance of safety of her position faded fast under the weight of the reality of it.

 

She is a queen whose only advantage is her father’s name and a brother that rules five kingdoms and has a reputation of omniscience. 

 

That means that none dares to outright to plot to displace or assassinate her, but with her only family so distant from Winterfell, her court is encouraged to exercise pressure on her time and decisions.

 

For all that she loves the rigid protocols of courtly life, in between receiving ambassadors, singers and poets from the Five Kingdoms, entertaining herself with the ladies of high nothernhouses with hunts and dances, contending constantly with the high lords over every little things is a trial.

 

They are a quarrelsome and easily divided lot that challenges her political and commercial decisions and near constantly harasses her to resolve their problems.

 

There’s always someone disapproving of something she has said or done, arguing whether she is being too unyielding or too eager to please, too superficial or too precise, too much demanding or too much of a nitpicker, too much ignorant or too much well read. 

 

It has offended her vanity to realize she is a queen who is not too particularly well liked, no matter how hard she tried to win over her people. They love her legacy, the idea of Ned Stark daughter bringing them what Robb promised and failed to deliver, and they honor her blood, but she is not but an extension of her family name to them.

 

She attempted to play the Margaery with her commoners, visiting winter town often and committing to charity and showing sympathy to the poor :all it has won to her is a reputation as a false, vain and wasteful woman.

 

 

When she is compared to her father and mother , is rarely for a compliment. Lady Catelyn had a natural warmth and compassion Sansa knows she lacks and unable to feign well, after all those years spent learning to be cold and sharp and... well yes, false. Lord Eddard had a certain charisma born of both authority and integrity, that Sansa with all of her caution, strictness and chilly imperiousness cannot quite measure you to. Robb too, was reckless and impetuous, brilliant in battle if not in politics , and whatever resentment his choice in bride awoke among her people, the Red Wedding made him forever a martyr in their minds, an heroic figure whose promise was cut off too soon.

Arya , however strange and dead inside she had became , was only ever remembered as the Night-Slayer.

There were ballads sung all over the North and beyond about the tragic fates that befell her family.

 

“ The Quiet Wolf” was sang about her father, painted the strong lord whose reputation was stainless except for one sin - a bastard son who was not a son at all- and who died for speaking the truth after his dear friend the king was murdered.

 

“ The Young Wolf “ was written about Robb, his rapid ascent and his violent fall ... for love, andapparently for ‘ an honor so pure it refused to stain herself’.

 

“ The North Remembers” is a rather gloomy ballad Arya would likely enjoy, about The Red Wedding and the supposed subsequent execution of house Frey from a ‘ revenant’, a vengeaful spirit of the night.

 

“ The Wolf Maid” is a eerie, delicate tune that is Sansa’s favorite and that speaks of the legend of her aunt Lyanna, ‘wild as a snowstorm and beautiful like a rose’, ‘bewitcher of princes and storm lords’ that ends with her birthing an hero and a villain.

 

“ The Bastard Of Winterfell “ is one Sansa knows people love but never dare to play where she might hear about it. It has a bold and catchy rhythm that will just invite you to dance and it has taught a lot to her of how common people really think of Jon - half hero and half villain, kneeling king who led the North through the long night, secret prince raised a bastard, deserter of the watch , enough of a dragon to bed his aunt, enough of a bastard to kill her. Cursed child of a betrayal of vows -from his father to his dornish wife- and of the treasonous love that caused a war , sent from gods to punish his parents and end the dragon ‘s house.

 

Sansa used to love songs, when she was younger, used to think life was just like them.... and then she hated them, like they had secretly betrayed her and paved the road to her destruction. Now she is a queen and she has good number of them sung to her, written for her, presented to her as a gift, she knows to listen and learn from them. She knows they have just enough of truth and enough of a lie to be a twisted reflection of reality, but most of them are all true in their ways.

 

A thousand songs are written about the Queen In The North. Most of them are all about her beauty, fluttering compliments of her porcelain skin, river blue eyes and coppery hair.

They are the safe option, what visiting singers write when they want to flatter and curry favor, and hope to remain in her castle a bit longer.

 

Some will tell of her wisdom and cleverness and wit and they are generally sung when she is visiting her bannermen keeps - patriotic songs that praise her boldness in asking for Nothern indipendence as soon as her brother wascrowned.

 

Sansa has her people’ gratitude, their loyalty, their respect, their sympathy, if not their love.

 

She lacks a good number of the qualities that seem to be necessary to make a really great and inspiring ruler: lacking faith in most humanity, she is ill equipped to inspire any, and she has no real trust that people or systems can be made better than they are. She is efficient and precise in her administration of the realm, but her way to get the nobles to do exactly as she wantsmostly rests on relentless needling and rather blunt manipulation.

For Nothern folk, who is stubbornly convinced courage, transparency of intention and big, idealistic speeches are what nobility should be made of , she is not ideal but she will do.

 

And that so natural because after all, it is rather easy to worship her family now they are either dead or gone, unable to make mistakes or decisions, or even to be anything more than figureheads for colorful music. 

Sansa is the one who lives, who remained to work with what she is given.

The one who puts in the work and makes the effort to see the North through the indipendence she brought them.

 

Because she is smart enough, but not as smart as she once fancied herself being.

 

The one natural resource her country has in abundance is wood - that means that to trade enough to outlast harsh winters, they might leverage more on carving, maybe exporting wood statues or toys to richer kingdoms. Yet they are folk so focused on survival, their simple craftsmanship does not really appeal to more extravagant southern tastes, and in the wake of rebuilding after the war, her attempts to encourage the imitation of southern styles are seen as little more than a woman ‘s little whims.

 

Let mind the fact she knows the South better, and has every reason to refuse investing in craft that won’t sell.

 

The royal treasury is near empty, and with export taxes and traveling fees increased on the border with the Riverlands - uncle Edmure, like all petty men, would not admit he was still offended at her slighting him during the Council, but he has staunchly refused to make things anything but difficult for her since then- Sansa’s one available move to raise up her kingdom was to increase the prices for the wood exportation as much as it was viable.

 

As the Northern forests had always sourced the most wood for the continent, and in the necessity of rebuilding much Bran had been willing if to happy to accept his sister’s deals as much as he could with his own reduced means, the other realms had seen Sansa’s speculation as frank advantaging herself of their common misfortunes. It was nothing new in economy, naturally, but the fact Tyrion had promised a different, new and perfect world under a Stark king, and said king relation to the Queen In The North had made the people to feel exploited and cheated.

 

The result is that now the Reach is indipendent too, it favors trading with The Riverlands for wood, and with Essos for marble and stone. 

With Dragon’s Bay putting a ban over commerce with the north and deliberately assaulting their merchant ships under Daario Naharis grief and vengeance fueled command, and Yara Greyjoy reaving their shores, Sansa cannot avoid to reason that she has burned more bridges than she has built.

 

The one reason famine has not spread yet is that their population is already so reduced after the Long Night and the piracy.

 

 

The North has had more luck building more ships for whaling and fishing, but there too, Yara Greyjoy has made of the Iron Islands a contender whose coffers are far better off to begin, and who has better luck trading with the Riverlands and The Reach.

 

 

Sansa works with what she is given, and fights a mild irritation that her people are so resistent to change. She can barely advance suggestions to answer fire with fire and build some pirate ships of their own to attack Essosi and Ironborn merchant ships. The long history of attacks has made her lords naturally wary of the very idea, even without counting in how little they know of the ins and outs of getting any piracy done.

 

The misery of the general population has made the common folk that lives on the border with the Riverlands to get over any similiar compunctions : merchant caravans from the south are near regularly assaulted by brigands, which in turndoes not encourage commerce and makes any traveling south unsafe.

 

Sansa loathes to punish her people to be hungry, and tries to circumvent the issue by having merchant caravans is escorted by soldiers, and having soldiers patrolling the main paths to the borders. It keeps the problem contained but ever present.

 

Yet she cannot afford much else as her main merchant ships too require military protection .

 

It is all one huge headache, to rule one impoverished, large nation that blames *her* misteps for their circumstances.

 

It is Sansa’s fault if she can not control her uncle, if her closest ally, the Vale is too far away to be of any use.

It ‘s her fault if Theon ‘s alliance to her does not extend to his sister, her fault if Dragon’s Bay holds a grudge for the Dragon’s queen assassination, her fault if she cannot get Bran to give them more, more often. Her fault is her sister is not doing her duty and giving the realm a second succession line in these trying times.

 

Her fault if she has no heir and dances far too close to the end of her House.

 

The Lords ask often of Arya’s whereabouts, like Sansa should know , when it is pretty much common gossip fodder the Nightslayer has not sent so much as a raven since the Nymeria has sailed. She is mostly assumed to have perished to sea, but she has been assumed dead before so the lords keep hoping her disappearance is merely a way to escape the responsibility of a potential marriage alliance.

 

Sansa is at times of an half mind to agree, although never openly.

She is careful to drop hints and insinuations that her sister lives , as Bran had told her such, and that she has spent her years abroad as an assassin and may or may not be responsible for the massacre of house Frey.

Arya ‘s reputation and continued existence somewhere serve as a shield to dissuade those who might be tempted to remove an unwed queen from a dying house and replace her with someone younger and male from a more thriving lineage.

 

Sansa ‘s engagement to a the Mormont boy she legitimized barely has had time to take shape - there was a courtship for one year, where she tried hard to take a measure of him and make clear he was not going to be anything more than a consort, a father to her children.

 

Today, remembering his soft eyes and clumsy attempts to chivalry, she regrets the harshness her fear dictated to her. He tried to be gentle to her, but she kept attacking him and seeing ruses to claim her powerwhere there was none.

 

When he died in a hunting accident shortly after their engagement was announced, she was half sure the Manderlys were behind it -their was the loudest voice in opposition to the match, and as richest house in the North they had aspirations to offer her a husband from their line.

 

 

Yet she hadlet it go - because they were her richest supporters, and she could not affordthe instability of losing them or replacing them , not when nothern hopes rested uneasily on the possibility of a better fleet.

 

Sansa has tough refused to marry any of her other suitors, and thinks now it would be preferable in her situation to not marry at all. 

 

She cannot abide the idea of a marriage where she is slowly stripped of her agency as a queen, to be once more relegated to the role of a pawn.

 

No, she would rather to remain as she is now, even if she has day where she feels like barely more than an hostage to the role and the people she has chosen.

 

Ant day now, after all, Arya or Jon might come back.

 

Arya might tire of her wandering and come home again- she always hated geography when they were children, why should her sailing be anything more than a trick to escape a life as a lady? If she was to come back, Sansa would make clear neither of them will ever have to bend to such demands. They might be free and powerful together, if only Arya could stay, use her gifts to keep their rule stable and uncompromised.

And perhapsSansa would not mind to marry for a child, if she could be certain her husband would die shortly after he served his purpose .... she thinks she might love a Stark child, regardless of who the father was.

But those are the thoughts she hates, that make her to sound to her mind far too much like a Cersei Lannister acolyte, trying to make her sister into a Jaime Lannister placeholder.

 

No, it is far better to stay unwed and childless than to descend to that low.

 

She made clear to Jon the day he departed for the wall, that he could expect a pardon from her within a couple of years, if he served. 

 

But she received a report that he has never returned from his trip escorting the wildlings beyond the wall, so he is deemed an oath breaker to the Watch , a QueenSlayer who never served any sentence for his crime, and a possibly outlaw, asavage more at ease with other savages than his own more civilized people. His reputation has blackened in a ridiculous way for what she is sure it was a rash, spur of the moment decision taken in grief and anger .

 

Pardoning him and receiving him back to Winterfell now, would be an unpopular move on her part, but one she would take gladly if it meant she could have him back to her side.

 

( Would Arya not come back for him, if not for her?)

 

Sansa’s nights are often sleepless or haunted by nightmares. 

 

She dreams of Lady howling somewhere distant, calling for her, and her wandering through the blackest woods to reach her. Some nights she finds her, and Lady is unable to recognize her, tears her to pieces instead.Some nights she finds Lady bleeding over blood-streaked snow, dead or dying.

 

Other nights she dreams hunting at the Dreadfort, dresses as Alayne Stone dressed, with her dogs hungry for the scent of Daenerys Targaryen, and when Willow finds the Dragon Queen, she is the hopeful, otherworldly beautiful and elegant woman who came to Winterfell with hopeful eyes seeking hers, not the angry shell who left for KingsLanding after the Long Night. 

 

In her nightmares the Dragon Queen reaches for her, but Sansa has only poisoned words and cold , cruel eyes who watch as the dogs tearinto her soft body.

 

When she awakes Sansa is deeply disturbed, always, and unable to even stay in bed.

 

She knows what it all means, and after enough years have passed, taking away the sting, she cannot anymore to lie to herself about her reasons.

 

She was always vain, but once she was also a romantic. The Sansa of her younger years would have recoiled at the mere thought of a jealous and bitter woman who makes herself to stand against the more beautiful and powerful heroine who holds her brother ‘s heart.

 

In another world Sansa is the person she dreamed of becoming, gracious and courteous and full of love. Her beauty is not cold and stiff but lively and pure.Her hardships made a more loving and stronger version of herself , a woman who strives to make a place for higher ideals in a place of darkness and horror. Her scars made her powerful, not brittle, not someone who play acts the monsters that destroyed her to feel less scared of the world... and she is not afraid to believe a good man might love her, least he turns into another Petyr or Joffrey.

 

Sansa is not that person, because Sansa is weaker than that.

 

Daenerys Targaryen tough, she crossed the sea with that sort of reputation. Dragons, no need to rely on male lusts or lineages with a good repute to obtain a place into the game. Sold off to a violent horse lord and he kills her brother for her, in love. Comes to a foreign land brimming with courage and confidence,looking so beautiful and so cursedly untouched by the wars she stirs, with the greatest army world has ever seen , who looks up to her with fanatical devotion, and a king who knelt probably as soon he saw her face, even if he had no right to.

 

Sansa has hated her the moment she saw her. 

 

Even today thinking of the Queen Of Ashes stirs something ugly in her - satisfaction that she proved herself to be mad and monstrous, after all, not different from Joffrey and Cersei as Jon promised.

 

And jealousy, because Sansa still wants what Daenerys had and has even in death - the spark of greatness, the limitless devotion of her people, the capacity to herald the illusion of a better world, a memory time, madness or truth cannot touch.

 

Her victory upon the other woman remains hollow and somewhat dirty.

 

She pulled the strings of Tyrion, who still fancied himself her knight , but lusted after her as much as he lusted bitterly against the Queen he could not have. She had tested him, that timein the crypts, to see whether he could be turned... and had been pleasantly delighted that the dwarf was willing and ready to let her speak against his mistress because he wanted her approval. Then when he was afraid she had caught the chance, counting on the fact he wanted to be turned, and thanks to him and stupid Arya Jon was made into a murderer and not a king.

 

She should have followed things more closely... but then she might never have imagined that Arya would have encouraged Jon to kill Daenerys instead of making a clean and untraceable job herself.

 

Or that Jon would have followed through- Jon, whose besotted expression when he looked at the Dragon Queen made her to seethe, filling her with bitter memories of how Robb left her to the Lannisters and left himself be killed too, for a wartime romance.

 

Sansa wanted power, security, autonomy.

 

She was willing to break any deal with the Targaryen queen to get them, and to violate every last holy vow.

 

But really, she never had to.

 

She could have ingratiated herself to the other queen, put the same amount of effort in supporting Jon’s chosen alliances and to persuade Jon to marry her.

 

Jon could have been a king, a husband, a father... and he could have shared that with someone who loved him, whom he loved back.

 

She or Bran could have been appointed as warden of the North, and nobody could have contrasted them when a woman with Dragons backed them.

 

Arya could have stayed, or at least returned to the family if Jon had had children.

 

 

Who cared how many castles and cities Daenerys burned, as long as they were not of her people?

 

Sansa could not trust Jon tough, the way she cannot trust anyone, anymore.

 

And so she remains alone, the ashes of her dreams in her awake and the vague awareness what she has is not enough , especially not in front of all she has lost.

 

She only half regrets and she is only half ashamed, but when in the night she is awake and alone, looking at the snow that falls and falls... she feels older than her years and more tired, wishful for something different.

 

For Jon to be happy somewhere, for Arya to be coming home.

 

For the hope of love and trust and friendship, and above everything else for the heart she used to have .

 

“ I am inside you now” Ramsay threatened once and she swore every last part of him would disappear instead.

 

She has understood far too late the power was always in her hands.

 

She had no need to carry with her all that hurt - Ramsay, Joffrey, Cersei , Tyrion and Littlefinger, Sandor and every other man who leered at her and tried to make her a victim to her sex and status, they could have been all gone from her soul as soon as they were gone from her path. She let them to take residence there instead. She held on the fear and the scars like they could actually make her stronger, scared to repeat the past, desperate to squeeze some meaning from it.

 

She has punished herself for being the little bird, the naive girl men and women used, coveted, and made to cower.

 

She has hated and blamed herself instead of laying the blame and the anger where they were due, fought to destroy the remains of a softer, gentler Sansa with all her power.

 

 

She can have said goodbye to her vulnerability, but there’s nothing to shelter her now, from the sorrow to be somewhat absent, unrecognizable to herself.

 

She still waits for Sansa Stark to come home, but happy endings in the songs are never for those who betrayed everything they used to believe in.

 

 

 

( and she is a selfish, selfish woman, who still thinks only of herself because for way too long, herself was all she had... maybe all she will never have).

 

Sara, the sweetest and best loved of her dogs, died last month from a lung infection. Sansa fed her the best pieces of meat and kept her near a fireplace for all of her last days, hoping against all hope she would improve.

 

Now she is buried upon a hill Sansa used to bring her to play fetch, and her absence is felt to a near jarring level.

 

Sansa knows little of the bond between wargs and their bonded animals, but she remembers how she felt after losing Lady. This was different but the same, some kind of crippling that she cannot define. Part of her went with Lady, part of her was lost with Sara.

Specific segments too, and a foreboding lingers behind.

 

She saw the Dragon Queen becoming increasingly unstable after Viserion and Rhaegal were lost, and suspected some connection was there between the two events.

 

 

Wildlings do think wargs can be lost if they tie themselves too much to a specific bonded animal , but she doubts the truth is quite that.

 

Not that Sansa is willing to inquire after such a thing. She has a reputation to defend.

 

It is the symbolism that disturbs her, anyway.

Her mind tied itself more tightly to 

Willow and Jeyne , almost by reflex.

Willow is still the most vicious of her pets, but some of Sansa’s discipline seems to have rubbed off her through the bond, and she is more controlled, more prone to watchfulness than random streaks of aggression. Jeyne is quiet and obedient enough, following Sansa like a shadow during the day and burrowing on her mistress bed to sleep beside her every night she can get away with. Jeyne will seek to be petted often enough, with an edge of near needfulness , but she will start growling low like it is too good to be true after awhile, and she will bare her teeth and withdraw from Sansa near violently.Willow instead, does allow physical affection only very rarely and for a very short time.

 

Sansa sees shards of herself reflected into her dogs, and it scares her.

 

But that fear is not something she can focus on with the problem that her not having an heir represents .

 

 

In absence of Arya, she has throughof offering to adopt any ofJon ‘s future or present children, so that they can be raised to inherit Winterfell.

After fouryears with the wildlings he might very well might have a child now, or at least a new companion.

 

Surely he could be persuaded to allow her to legitimize them, and from there onwards.... she can make him to see sense. Which future could he give his children except famine and disease, if he lived so far away from civilization? the lords cannever accept a wildling raised heir, but they would accept the penance of father who gave up to the north a Stark son or daughter.

 

If that is to come to fruition, Jon could never cross the Wall again, least to be raised as a puppet regent for his child. 

 

Altough the chances of that wererather poor, considering his poor reputation .

 

She might  also simply to promise to name an heir, but the moment she did , there was a strong likeliness she would end up assassinated to make the way for him or her .

 

Another option is to offer her hand in marriage to Yhon Royce, who was a widow, and who had already plenty of heirs to his seat - it could be a sham marriage, with him at KingsLanding most of the year covering his seat as Master Of Laws. 

 

This way she would share her power with nobody, but still have the protection of an important marriage.

 

And he is old but no monster, so surely she could stomach bedding him if it meant having an heir with connections to the Vale.

 

The lords tough,  are unlikely to be happy with this match.

 

She would have preferred risking by adopting Jon’s children.

 

Unfortunately, the sentries she kept sending beyond the wall to find him kept having no luck.

 

Sansa has another plan tough. She is improving with warging birds, and she has a falcon she has trained well enough.

 

He is going to be strong to share her memories eventually, and she is sure she can use him to scout for her cousin-brother .

 

After all, why to sent someone else to do a work you might accomplish more efficiently?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice: right now Sansa is in a fairly similiar position to where Daenerys was at the end of season 8.


	13. Broken Hearts, part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four years, Jon ‘s side of the story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly inspired by KH interview on Jon Snow final epilogue as a character:
> 
> “[S]eeing him go beyond the Wall back to something true, something honest, something pure with these people he was always told he belongs with — the Free Folk — it felt to me like he was finally free,”
> 
>  
> 
> “Instead of being chained and sent to the Wall, it felt like he was set free. It was a really sweet ending. As much as he had done a horrible thing [in killing Daenerys], as much as he had felt that pain, the actual ending for him was finally being released.”

Four years carried no definitive answer for Jon Snow.

 

He fell in the rhythm of wildling life - day in, day out, there was a kind of tranquillity in just going through the motions of living as a nomad. Hunting and tracking, keeping watch on the camp, fishing through the iced rivers. Drinking and talking around the fire with the rest of the tribe when the day was closing.

 

Val eventually stopped of trying to convince him to steal her, or to steal him herself, and she brought her attentions elsewhere. She was swelling with her new companion child by the third year Jon was among her people, around the same time Tormund welcomed a new daughter.

 

It looked at a point like it was spring everywhere around Jon.Steady couples formed, children grew and were born or conceived, new loves blossomed, old men died and were buried.

 

Jon felt like a witness to the flow of the camp happenings, a guest who was welcome, but who existed like a fading memory of a distant winter night. The wildlings had survived and endured, and now they were forgetting The Long Night and the kneelers wars, to return to their ways.

 

It was beautiful, but Jon could not join in. At first, it was justoverpowering release he felt, a blinding relief he could leave behind the sham his life had suddenly turned into, and Westeros ‘ petty dramas.

 

His guilt and his shame were with him every day, as even the shadow of his failures. Daenerys and his father-uncle haunted him, with all the questions he could not ask the latter and all the regrets he nursed about the former.

 

Even with his head and his heart so heavy, he did miss having some sort of purpose. His days were simple here, weightless but also aimless. He found himself drifting between holding onto the routine when his mood was so blueit was hard to want anything at all, and a sense of longing and waiting for something different.

 

There was a desperation inside him older and deeper than anything he had ever known, rising its ugly head and roaring in his chest.

 

His memory rang full of dissonances.

 

Ned Stark ‘s bastard boy, the one stain on his father’s candid honor, was full of want for all things he was to never have. Winterfell, a true name and whole family, the persepective of a sinless, honorable future. But it was greedy and lustful to want those things, a sure sign of his impure origins. Such things belonged to men like Robb because they were born right, born already full, made of light and not sin. The bastard boy sacrificed all his wants and all his resentments for his family, for the gratitude that they had taken in and accepted him. He silenced his dirty, wrong ambition and honed the thirst to prove himself into a tool to carve himself a place among criminals, dedicating himself wholly to an higher purpose. 

His whole life was an exercise in self abnegation. And in the end he was rewarded, was he not?He was given Winterfell, and a crown he never wanted but he was proud of deserving. He had the love of a woman who was beyond anything he could have ever dreamed up, and it seemed like he was so close to accomplish with her the one purpose his existence had built toward. 

 

That man diedwithout a sound, vanished before Jon could realize it.

 

Lyanna’s Stark son could not take his place. That boy was true born and had everything taken from him before he could even draw breath. He carried the name of his horrifically murdered brother , perhaps as a memorial, perhaps asa replacement. That boy knew nothing and was nothing. Everybody ( Uncle Ned, who could do no wrong) had lied to him. Everybody seemed to pull at his strings in want of something he did not know how to give ( he was carved empty).

 

Beyond the wall Jon Snow could be free, start over or brood over the past, forget or remember, live out his penance and dance with the ghost of his dead aunt lingering at the edge of his mind.

 

Some nights she was like a shadow casted over him: he could nearly feel her, nearly to touch her, and he did miss her like nothing else in the world. 

He felt the weight of everything he never told her hanging between them keenly, and yet the longing in his heart was so vivid it left him broken when the phantom of her was gone. Only once, he asked her to stay , and then he ruined it and emptied himself of all their past with words he could not ever take back.

 

She slipped away from him and did not return, like some revenant that had finally received her pound of flesh from a willing victim.

 

He wept that loss like he had killed her once more.

 

He wondered if the Targaryen madness was getting to him too.

 

Was this how Daenerys had felt in those last days in Winterfell? Those days before executing the spider ? The blue and black abyss, opening underneath her, the lows so vivid she was nearly numb and dead inside if not for the consuming sadness, the highs so sharp they chocked any resistance, a restless and angry anxiety for what was to come?

 

Ghost, almost a brother to him, has never been more worthy of his name. 

 

He is silent and watchful and distant, eyes often sliding to the forest even when he rests beside Jon while they keep watch at night. 

There’s a female wolf he hunts with, now, a sleek and muscular thing that looks positively petite beside his massive size, with fur that is very dark, and eyes that are very bright. They are in the process of mating, and Ghost can disappear for days or weeks , but eventually he always finds Jon and his human pack, whenever they have stopped, and he slides back in his usual place as faithful guardian like he never went away.

 

One day tough, Jon thinks he might not come back.

It is sad, the idea their time together might come to its natural end so soon, even if it should not be. He sent away Ghost himself once, and he meant fully for the wolf to be returned to the wilds he came from. 

 

Jon figures out one of them at least should be more than ... well, a ghost.

 

Maybe he has jinxed them both when he named the poor direwolf.

 

Whatever relativepeace he has enjoyed comes to an abrupt ending when Sansa’s bird find him.

 

He almost on his fifth full year of his ‘life’; and he is out on tracking a deer with Val and her man, Sigvud. He has not seen Ghost for nearly two weeks but through their bond, he sense the direwolf is still alive, and plenty well. 

 

He surprised to see a falcon swooping low above their heads, and Val jokes the bird looks like someone stoned him , as the trajectory of his flight is all strange and he has not the sense to tell the difference between men who might shoot an arrow into him and a common field mouse. The falcon shrieks, curves around them as it is calling for attention, and then it lands somewhere ahead them just to race straight toward theim... no, toward Jon. 

 

There’s a paper bound thightly to one of his legs with strips of leather and... his gait as he races suddenly reminds Jon of a very specific person. 

 

Sigvud mutters something about wargs, but Jon is not listening.

 

Sansa is no warg but ... 

 

He is not at all surprised to find he has in his hands a letter from her.

 

It is very formal, the wording, and he has to read twice to be certain to has understood clearly her meaning and he is not , in fact fooling himself.

 

Sansa, caring sister she is, inquires about his health, reassures him of her continued sisterly  concern and devotion and ... she is so generous to ask him if she can legitimize any potential children, adding in, as a footnote, that she is even willing to make them her heirs.

 

She does not write she should actually take in her hands their education for such a eventuality to come to pass, but of course he would like to think she is not considering him such a fool that he would not put hinge together.

 

But then, Sansa had acquired the habit to act like she did consider herself the smartest person in any room for even stating the obvious so he cannot be sure.

 

Hos stomach twists when he looks to the falcon and sees her sharp, assessing gaze staring back.

 

She is a warg, after all.

 

And now she has a way to find him, and there’s something she wants of him .

 

He can just imagine the lengths she would go to get it, now she is a queen and can actually force his hand.

 

Will she want to marry him off once she can ascertain he has no children and no lover to speak of?

 

Probably not, even if she had spoken of pardoning him, last time they spoke to each other face. There was no mention of that in the letter though, and he is surprised to realize he is wary of his sister-cousin.

 

Queens are used to get their way, and Sansa was very single minded and convinced she had the right of everything even before she was crowned.

 

His mind reaches for the bird, struggles and grasps on some tendril of Sansa’s that stirs there. 

 

There’s no child. Nor there will never be. - he drums into that space between their battling consciousnesses.

 

The falcon makes a strange, angry sound- reaches out to slash Jon’s hands with his talons, utterly confused at the dual , contrasting voices in his brain, and vaguely angry at the perceived attack to his mistress.

 

He departs in a fury, diving for the open sky. 

 

Jon thinks for a moment it will be gone and this accident will be put aside as just another instance of his ‘sister’ overstepping boundaries get has not defined clearly enough.

 

But when he is at the camp, later in the day, the bird is flying lazy circlesabove the tents, just high enough arrows would not easily center him.

 

What is he to do?


	14. A Soundtrack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to post up to chapter 16 before the new year was out but since that has proved impossible...  
> I decided to post my writing soundtrack for this story.
> 
> It ‘s definitely spoilery for the next chapters!

A Soundtrack

Broken Crown- Mumford and sons ( tyrion)  
Babel- Mumford and sons ( Jon leaving Westeros behind)

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons (Daeron,Bran, chapter 1 in general)

Waves- Dean Lewis, ( Arya during her seafaring days)  
Welcome Home - Radical Face ( Sansa in Winterfell in her first days as queen in the north)

I and Love and You - The Avett Brothers ( Jon on Jon/Dany as he starts living beyond the wall)

Timshel - Mumford and Sons( Dany after her resurrection and all during her pregnancy)

 

World Spins Madly On - The Weepies ( Both Jon and Dany after he killed her as they struggle to get back to living )

Down - Jason Walker ( Sansa in chapter 12)

The Hardest Of Hearts- Florence&The Machine (Future Jon /Dany, Drogo/Dany in chapter 11-14)

Jenny Of Oldstones- Florence& The Machine( Dany and her own necromantic/ shadow binder powers as she starts dabbling and going deeper into them )

Be Still - The Fray, ( Dany in the Volantis temple)  
Losing Your Memory - Ryan Star ( Jon in chapter 13)  
If you could see me now ( Jon / Dany in chapter 13)

Little Talks- Of Monsters and Men ( Jon on Jon/ Dany in chapter 13)

Dirty Paws - Of Monsters and Men ( Dany- Sansa conflict in chapter 12)

From now on - Hugh Jackman ( Jon/ Dany, chapter 16)

 

The Real You - Alex Goot ( Jon/Dany , chapter 16)

Grow Old with me- Tom Odell ( Jon/Dany)

I See Fire- Ed Sheeran ( Daenerys& Jon , joined in their common destiny)

 

A Gun & A Choice - Asaf Avidan

( really perfect for Jon in chapter 16)

 

Listen at:  
https://open.spotify.com/user/upev32smn1drwn6as95gejc03/playlist/21czWggNvOPsf71edjkrY1?si=ariFWIRgQE-mTwffQ_jKow


	15. Passing Through Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys goes deeper into her path as shadow binder

"When will he be as he was?""When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. . . . When the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves.When your womb quickens again and you bear a living child. Then he will return and not before."

 

It is nearly a sweet memory now, as Daenerys ‘s mind drifts untethered from place to place, time to time.

 

 

“ Curses spoken in haste always miss their mark somehow, but they can turn useful, cannot they?”

 

There’s a smile somewhere in that precious whisper - Rhaella, that Daenerys is learning to know as the white embrace that envelopes her when the fire carries her consciousness to Dragonstone , or the pale shade that she can barely make out in distance when she does her trance work .

 

Rhaella, more often than not, will wait for Daenerys to be the first one to reach out, will linger hesitating like she is afraid to be unwanted just out of the range of her daughter ‘s vision. Or she will follow, when Daenerys remains adrift in between places or people, holding onto her somehow, with an intangible grasp that is at once persistent and easy to slip away from.

 

The Dragonstone that exists in the shadowy realm Daenerys visits is not quite what it was .

 

There’s sea always roaring, cold and cutting even in its salty, crisp scent.

 

The wind is strong, whips at her face and skin like it is alive.

 

Dragonstone as she saw it the first time was empty and severe halls full of regrets, this one is one imposing place whose walls are colored with her mother ‘s sense of safety, her pride and love and comfort. This was the sanctuary where she could hide at times from her mad father, the theater to her few happy memories of raising Viserys and Rhaegar.

 

Daenerys brings Rhaego there, when she can lull him into accepting that peace, when she can distract him from the black abyss of need he is most of the time.

Her poor child, always yearning for something she cannot fully give him.

 

When Dragonstone is kind to them, and Rhaella will look over Daenerys ‘s shoulder to look ather grandchild, silent but present, it is the nearest thing to family bliss Daenerys has never known.

 

It’s bittersweet that she can only have this in dreams, and that she carries in her awakening hours the regret of not being capable to give this to her living Daeron.

 

 

But the point is, to Shadow-Dragonstone, twin suns set in the east and rise in the west, each a red and angry star bleeding into a black, foreboding halo.

 

And the sea will withdraw in some histances , until the fortress stands in a bone white desert.

 

Just like near the Shadow-plains she finds Drogo, mountains constantly blow away into dust, making place for more endless stretches of giant grass painted grey, black or sanguine.

 

Daenerys watches those wonders often, eyes wide and hungry, fear and fascination warring against each other in her heart. 

 

She should stay away from all of this, whatever it is, because every night she comes she feels more firmly anchored to this strange realm.

 

But she cannot. 

Half of her heart is there, in what the shadow-binders call the ‘demi-mondre ‘ , the half-world, the changeable reality that lies in between this world and countless others.

 

The Red God faith claims that none , no matter how advanced in other ways of the religion, can be a shadow binder without die there and being therein reborn as that is the place a shadow binder soul come to reside and where his or her shadow-bonds are forged, not by deliberate intent , but by nature itself. Shadow-bonds, spiritual ties to spirits that already are of the Shadow-World, are what makes a shadow binder capable to visit the places of The Demimondre without getting lost, what enables eventually one to gather power and information.

 

Daenerys counts her shadow-kin in Rhaella, Rhaego, Viserion, Rhaegal, Drogo, Missandei, and, more recently, old Ser Barristan who waits for her in Shadow -Meereen and calls for her to come. Daenerys, too ashamed of who she has became, still has to answer and follow the pull on the thether that would carry her to him.

Still, she will go eventually- the pull is a whistle constantly in her ears, when she awakes.

 

 

It is because of her bond to Viserion and Rhaegal Daenerys can shift in a huge, silvery dragon herself when she is in the demimondre.

It is because of Drogo and Rhaego she can reach into what she believes to be the Nightlands, because of Rhaella she can fly to Shadow-Dragonstone, and because of her dear Missandei she can swim to Shadow-Naath.

 

 

Kinvara with her secret smiles and bottomless eyes has only words of praise and encouragement for her fast progress with Shadow-work, even if the Targaryen Queen cannot quite bring herself to say everything that troubles her.

 

Some details are just too personal to share.

 

It is not for power or wisdom Daenerys returns to her shadow-kin, not for faith or devotion.

 

And yet she thinks, if it is true the Rhllor gift to humanityis the three flames lit in every heart ( for love, pain and life ), the god should approve, as she feels all three of them burning brighter for every one of her lost loves.

 

Yet the Shadow world is not a kind place, for all the comfort it can give her, and she is not certain she is becoming any kinder there.

 

She went to Drogo at first, nearly solely for the lure of looking finally back.

 

It had been enthralling, after losing herself to Westeros, to just remember the girl she had been- shy and full of fear at first, but then ... a queen who forged strength from loss and courage from fear. And from forgiveness, love.

 

For all that Drogo had raped her on their wedding night, she had coaxed from necessity virtue and had made herself to win his respect.

He had made her a queen in return, given her the first taste of something like home. 

 

She had chosen to forgive him and put the early days of their marriage out of her mind, as she had chosen to look beyond the brutality of his peopleand of his past.

 

In her dreams tough, she is not so forgiving- she can be a gentle and generous lover , a soft bride much like the girl he wed so long ago, but soon enough the tide turns and she is fierceand vicious, a dragon-woman who will pull away from a languid kiss to claw through his chest, reach to his heart and eat it as it still beats in her hands. He won’t make a sound as his life flows from him to her, and with it his strength. She will be all sharp reflexes and confident vigor when she returns to the real world from their shared time, be it because of what has passed between them during an intense coupling ( a fire that warms her and yet sings to her of danger), be it becauseshe has eaten of him ( and him, somehow, still invites her to it and allows this travesty).

 

‘Now youare the white mare of death and become the stallion who will mount the world’ she reads in the lines of his willing, cold body ‘ and through you I still live, in your blood, my heart still beats, and in this rite I still protect you, moon of my life’.

 

She willfeel strange, after, when she remembers, and will train harder and longer with a soldier of the Fiery Hand until her movements are less blunt force and quick reflexes and more of her own hard won lethal grace, unable to stand the thought her little son might be touched by hands that are not entirely hers.

 

She struggles some days to remember why she is even doing this, risking to lose herself again when she might simply to be the Queen Of Dragon’s Bay, settling in a kind of fragile security.

 

But then she thinks of how fast she lost it all before, and knows from a place deep in herself that the only power that endures is the power other people cannot take from you.

For Daeron, and for herself, she insists and endures, in the hope someday she might thrive .

 

 

Yet, this new path is hard and testes her resolution in ways she never anticipates.

 

She may hunt for Drogo over the plains of the Nightlands, or lay with him under a blanket of fiery stars,but his presence in her life is not always welcome.

 

The old Daenerys, a mouse made into a queen, might have loved the man and forgave the savage. She had nobody else in the world, after all.

 

The new Daenerys tough, has lived several different lives since he died. She clashes under the constraints of the past, and yet seethes at the evidence she is no longer what she was. She no longer has that shine in 

her eyes, at a promise of tenderness , nor she waits for a better world, a spring that has already passed her by. She is a creature of the plenitude of summer, born for the heat of struggle, battle and passion, forged by firesof victory and rage.

 

She has scars of a woman ‘s life inside her : the girl is already gone , regardless of how much she might be missed.

 

The woman in her recoils at the concept of Drogo possessing any part of her self, her inner dragon raging at the memory of long passed violence.

 

 

But, just like her, Drogo is not quite the man she briefly shared her path with.

 

In death he looks both more and less than what and who he was. Like all the trappings of the real world were cutaway from him, and he is no longer nor an horse lord nor her husband nor a khal. Just Drogo, some being with no past and no future , washed clean of most of what drove when he was mere flesh into a purer incarnation of who he might have been.

 

She might almost envy him, if not for the spark in his eyes that speaks of that merely half sated longing for the unfinished business of merely living .

 

She loves him and she hates him, she forgives him and she resents him and above everything else, she shares the ache of Rhaego’s state with him, the love for this incomplete family of three they never got a chance to build.

 

So he nourishes her and she hunts for him, or they dance and love and run over the plains, together, and in that togetherness they are one blood and one flesh. Shadow-kin.

 

And she remembers, as their bodies meet rolling over the grass, or while they curl around each other in a solitary tent, that shehas left parts of herself in everyone she has loved who loved her back, and it was not always an one sided sacrifice. 

 

It was a seed, that love, that grew a whole garden. It made her Missandei’s soul sister, Greyworm ‘s friend and queen, her people’s protector, Drogo’s companion, and a mother’s so many times over.

Even Jon, who betrayed and killed and disappointed her, will always be with her in a fashion.

Not just in their beautiful son, or in her memories, but in that example he gave her when she first fell in love with him, of integrity and honor. In the way he opened her heart, and made her to feel she could love so much, and feel so much loneliness after for the first time not feeling alone at all. 

Drogo was maybe the first person to ever believe in her and her fire,the first who, instead of crushing her when she fought back to take her place in the world , moved aside to allow her to have something of hers. The first who accepted her as she was.For all other complications of their relationship, she can never be not grateful about that. 

 

Jon instead, he gave a love that for such a short time as a boat ride, flared up to illuminate the world, making everything beautiful and perfect and filled with the hope of a whole happiness, a love that touched every part of her and devastated everything in its wake, introducing her to a vulnerability she did not know she had.

 

All is gone now, yet Daenerys remains - both a khaleesi and the queen Jonbent the knee for, the young woman who carried the hopes of slaves and the one who slaughtered a whole city in anger.

 

The bride who forgave Drogo and who killed him in mercy, the lover Jon adored and the one he recoiled from.

 

 

There’s just so much - and really- after such a longwandering Daenerys knows who she is and where she comes from at last. Roots are no longer a thing she imagines into a red door and a lemon tree, a legacy dictated by a family she has never known or even the distant throne of a foreign land. 

 

She knows she has inherited some of her parents fragilities, that her dragons raised her as much as she raised them probably ( they were the first beings she was ever truly responsible for and they made her dreams so much bigger merely existing in them) , just like the slaves she liberated also liberated her, in a way, to be something more than one of many claimants to the Iron Throne.

 

She can never go back to be a dispossessed royal orphan, no matter what they try to take from her in future. Her name has more weight than her lineage and her roots grew too deep to shake.

 

And that is the true light, and now she knows it, she can tell what the shadow was ( all the doubts and the fears and the mud they threw on her and the ones she herself fed, the dirt she chocked on when she hated herself for not winning over the north and Jon’s family and the kingdom she wanted to be at home in, and all the pain that hid and twisted her truths, the ways she rejected herself for falling short the person she wanted to be, the ways she felt solost she could no longer see and find herself).

 

Your shadow was made of all those things thatburied you in until you were a stranger to all the ones who had loved and known you, that chocked you until all you wanted was to sleep forever, to die.

 

It is at last just as Quaite told her : ‘ To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.’

 

But there was another part to that prophecy:

 

‘To go north, you must go south. To reach the west, you must go east.’

 

Does that mean that taking Westeros isstill possible? By solidifying her power base in the east?

 

Not that she would take such important decision based on prophecy but... 

 

It would not be the first time the woman was right.

 

She gave that warning too, about a perfumed ...Varys! 

 

‘Beware the perfumed seneschal. Be aware of the mummer dragon’.

 

Was that Jon, whose uncle had definitely put on the chief of all mummer farces to keep him safe?

 

If only Daenerys had paid the warning the proper attention , and turned outboth spider and imp!

 

If only she had...considered the association when Jon’s parentage was revealed to her, she could have not allowed herself to be alone with him that day he had killed her.

 

 

If she had listened... she might be inThe Red Keep now, with her child, and her city of ashes.

Maybe Jon might even have married her, for their child ‘s sake.

 

No, maybe it was better that things went as they did.

 

She would prefer to be where she is, in Volantis, dancing with shadows, finding some sort peace, than over Kings Landing, sitting over a throne conquered with too many sacrifices, surrounded by false friends, false loves and betrayers.


	16. Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon deals with Sansa ‘s problem. It is actually only the beginning of his own troubles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for this chapter :
> 
> A Gun & A Choice by Asaf Avidan

Jon does not know what to do about the damn bird.

 

The Sansa’s falcon keeps circling the wildling camp and he has had to stop children from ‘playing’ at putting an arrow straight into itin multiple occasions. The adults he convinced to leave the issue to him, mostly through Tormund’s interference.

 

The situation has the unexpected consequence of making him to notice how much of his acceptance among these people rests on his friendvouching for him.

 

When he had joined them, the memory of the battles fought with him still fresh in everybody’s memories, it had been known he had killed his queen andhis lover, but not his aunt. Some had looked at him with distrust, and he knew there were women in Val’s family who had advised her against pursuing him.

 

But wildlings did not care about the affairs of kneelers, so the matter of his crime had been somehow of little interest to them , and they had not heard of the whispers of his parentage.

 

 

Jon had felt somehow safe in the knowledge that his past and his secrets were something he could leave behind.

 

Now he realizes he has been too absorbed in his own anguishes to notice the news has spread somehow ( Tormund drunken’s ramblings most likely) and the good reputation he had established on the battlefield had became tarnished by the deeply ingrained distaste for kinslayers in wildling culture.

 

Now, to add on that, he is the man whose warg queen of sister brings suspicion and unwanted attention on their affairs.

 

They care very little for that, and he cannot persuade them that Sansa is no threat to them.

 

The common argument is pretty much ‘she went butting heads against the dragon queen when she was an ally with two dragons and a mighty army under her turf. What’s to stop her from turning on former allies who won’t kneel to her, that hid her deserter brother-cousin, if she does not get anything she wants?’

 

And he has had a merry time of trying to explain Sansa is just interested in inheritances and the wildlings are of no interest to her, but he cannot seem to get through with the message. There’s a common suspicion Sansa might send soldiers to recover him, and the elders of the tribe just advise to not do away with the bird or to try to cross-warg him away from Sansa before of any hostile action, because she might pretty easily to get another.

 

Jon has the sensation things might get ugly fast.

 

And he finds mildly disheartening that even here , he cannot seem to get away from politics and fickle allegiances.

Surprise, surprise, people kept being being people everywhere.

 

Was he really ever so stupid to think he could get away from that, merely leaving civilization behind?

 

He feels suddenly thrown back to those days in Winterfell, when he had placate Notherners away turning on him for bending the knee.

 

He remembers smiling on beatifically as a nothern soldier made a show of spitting on the ground as Daenerys stopped by him, all while knowing he should have to take drastic action to make notherners accept his decision.

 

He had known a strong lord could only respond to such transparent show of disrespect with a rigid punishment - having the man’s tongue ‘s cut would have not been unwarrranted, but an humiliating punishment as having him publicly whipped or cleaning latrines would have sent the message all the same.

 

He had ignored his own misgiving, smiled like a perfect , weak idiot, and told himself he had to concern himself with keeping the status quo until the Night King was dealt with. That was pretty much the same thing he had told himself when Sansa had made a public show of antagonizing his decision of forgo nothern indipendence , taking for herself the consensus of most notherners. 

 

In truth, he had mostly been scared that taking Daenerys ‘s side firmly or taking a rigid position over the obedience and the respect he was owed would have only encouraged his queen to do the same.

 

Even then, before she had given him any reason to doubt her, he is forced to admit he feared the powerher dragons gave her and the confidence she relied on it with, as even her terrible resolve to be always in the right.

 

Now tough, he has no such conflicted feelings to hide behind, and yet he is once more in the position to placate men to not lash out against a queen he cares about.

 

Except this time, he does find a solution.

 

He stops waiting for Sansa to give up and avoiding the bird.

 

Instead, he waits for a convenient moment and gestures to the bird to follow outside the camp boundaries, then he offers his arm for the falcon to land.

 

“ Use that clever mind of yours , Sansa. Any children I have won’t just be wolves, but half dragons. You name them your heirs, you will never be free of the risk someone will use them to try and unite the seven kingdoms again. If you care about Nothern indipendence, you have to let this go.”

 

The falcon looks back into his pleading eyes with an assessing , grim gaze that gives nothing away.

 

Jon was not sure this argument would work, and he can get nothing from the bird in the way of clues.

 

“ I won’t have children just to see them dragged in the game of thrones. I am never having children.”

 

He is surprised at how much he means that.

Once he thought the taint of bastardy was the worst thing he could pass over anyone. The loathing, the impossibility of having a future where he fit either with the small folk or with the high born.

 

Now he thinks giving someone life just so they will be used like a pawn across a board and then disposed off when they weren’t delivering anymore just might be worse.

 

It’s the first time he feels like he might understand why Ned Stark let him join the Watch with minimal argument. He wanted it, he was going to be safe from the Baratheons there, and his children could not be discovered or used as secret Targaryens. A perfect solution made more perfect by how his younger self had craved it. Let alone his reasons were all wrong.

 

Sansa’s birdpecked him in the arm,quick and painful, to bring back his attention to him. Then the falcon stared back to him some more, enigmatic, and made the strangest bending forward motion, like a courtsy.

Jon smiles, relieved.

 

He watches the bird flying off with that smile still frozen on his face, something bittersweet in his throat, chocking him.

 

——

 

In the following weeks he tells himself he does not wait for a raven , or any other acknowledgement.

 

Sansa could be stubborn and unrelenting, and he had gotten what he wanted. She had a way to find him now, if she so chose.

 

She could contact him, she knew where he was.

 

He could have sent a letter with the falcon tough, to encourage her.

He and Sansa were never close, and her manipulative approach to most things, as even her superior attitude, hadleft him rather uneasy around her . He did not know how talk to her without getting irritated most of time, but he would still like to keep some sort of rapport.

 

Maybe she would reach out to him again tough, and make good on her past promise of a royal pardon.

 

Enough time has passed by now.

 

While he has no intention of returning south of the wall, it is a nice thought to contemplate the idea he might someday, be allowed to visit Winterfell again.

 

Even Benjen usedto, with the excuse of recruiting. 

 

 

Not that there would bemuch point to it , with Arya and Bran gone and Sansa not quite warm to him.

 

Things might change someday tough, and he allows himself the little selfish desire to imagine his family united and thriving as it once was set to, beforeEddard Stark received that unhappy assignment as hand of the king.

 

He does not know how to relate to the concept that House Stark might really go extinct right atapparent apex of its triumph - Bran and Sansa both sovereigns in their right, and yet their inheritance is set to be shallowed by nothingness.

 

 

The conflict between house Stark and house Targaryen has officially managed mutual annihilation.

 

Unless Sansa changes her mind and marries or Arya returns home with a bastard of her own.

 

Jon shrugs.

 

Anything can still happen, but dynastic stuggles are not something he is going to be part of , never again.

 

 

—

 

There’s no raven from Sansa, and no pardon and yet when it is decided that it is time to move again, Jon is reluctant to go alongwith the tribe.

 

Jon is still absent, and their bond feels so stretched thin, he worries some over it . 

 

The weather has been strange lately, like winter and spring are struggling with each other.

 

Warmer days abruptly give away with stormy ones, and Soothsayers seem to think it a bad omen.

A rowdy discontentment has spread among the people, and Tormund’s young daughter, along with many other young children , was lost to harshness of the season. His friend has reacted drinking and swearing harder, putting on a facade of enduring good cheer that will blend into volatile churlishness and stubborn silence spells from hour to hour. 

 

Jon is at loss of how to deal with him, and feels rather guilty about that , considering how good Tormund was at pulling out of his own grief, those first months.

 

—-

 

Months fall away like leaves from a white ring tree and Jon has slipped abc into his deep melancholy.

 

Sansa’s stretched silence only makes him to think back of Arya, as she once was.

 

The little sister that felt on occasion a bit like an outsider in Winterfell, just like him, closer to his soul than even Robb could be.

 

The sibling he had an easier time to talk with , about everything and anything.

 

Who joked with him and fought dirty when they played.

 

She had grown into the steely and cold young woman that had put in his hands a dagger and a choice, and then had never wanted to even talk of how he felt about the deed.

 

He has the gut wrenching realization that while she was much focused on getting him to choose the Stark side of the argument, she had to have felt so entitled to his allegiance, she had not assumed he would have felt much of a conflict. Because she was not going to feel anything of the sort, in his shoes.

 

She had spoken of knowing a killer when she saw one, but really, she had not been talking about Daenerys at all. She had been talking of herself. Esteeming what he and Daenerys were capable of through the lens of her own standards.

 

His little sister had grown into a killer. 

 

He had known it, somewhere inside, from the way she moved and the flinty, vacant hardness of her gaze occasionally had.

 

But he had never allowed himself to fully let what it meant to sink in.

 

He had thought only that she might have killed to survive in the streets, as it there was little way for a little girl without any protection to live through the meeting of danger if she had not.

 

I wonders now how she spent those years apart, precisely.

 

Probably as some sort of outlaw, he has suspected from the beginning.

 

He has never asked too many questions, sending she was not much willing to give any answers. 

 

He had thought her ashamed or fearful of his judgment, and he had wanted to give her trust, faith.

 

All things he had refused to give Daenerys, who wanted a life with him.

 

He had no justification except the duty he felt to his Stark family, to his own sisters.

For Daenerys he had had only an unruly sort of passion, a feeling thatmade him unsteady where duty had always grounded him before, made him certain .

 

In the end, it is somewhat ironic it is duty that made him blind.

 

He cannot hate Arya, no matter what she might have done or said but he feels the sting of that betrayal so much more for it , suddenly.

 

He killed Daenerys for her, for

them.

 

And he finally knows with absolute certainty it was the wrong choice, made for the wrong reasons, at the end of the wrong turn of a road paved with tepid intention and willfull ignorance.

 

He is no martyr, led astray by unjust circumstances and bad advice. 

 

His sisters are no innocents he needed to protect with a drawn sworn.

 

And Daenerys, who had committed a terrible atrocity with no valid reason, had not came to that edge alone. He had allowed others to push her there inch by inch, and then he had let her be the one -the only one- to pay the price.

 

She had paid with her life not only for her own mistake, but for Arya’s , for Joffrey ‘s and Cersei’s , for his own judgment of those who went after power.

 

It was something worse than wrong, and the feeling of dawning horror at the reality of the situation was no longer something Jon could run from.

 

No matter where he went, or with whom.

 

——-

 

A deep, unshakable melancholy seems to settle over him, coloring his days blue and black.

 

He keeps thinking of Daenerys, all facets of her from the imperious, difficult queen to the strong and compassionate woman to the fragile, desperate for a connection girl he had known in her last days.

 

He wishes desperately he could undo what he has done, and hates his reflection in a mirror more than he has ever thought possible.

 

He wishes for all manner of things that he realizes are impossible - for forgiveness, atonement, her presence back into the world.

 

He could stomach the idea she was gone when he believed it a tragic necessity, the result of an impossible choice that was meant to tear his heart in half anyway.

 

Without that illusion her death has became only a terrible waste , an infamy he might and should have easily avoided.

 

It is no comfort the thought he spared the realm from more wars, if that is even true.

 

It is no particular help to remember of the children she burned , not when now he can remember her trying to cling to him, begging him without words to give him crumbs of his affection , something -anything- to hope for in the desperation she was sinking into.

 

He had understood what she was asking, but he left her to it anyway, because he judged her and disapproved of what she was doing and...

 

He had called that love.

 

—-

 

 

The one part of his days he looks forward to anymore is the nights.

 

Sleep shallow him whole and devours anything he has done during the daylight hours until nothing but sweet oblivion is left.

 

He can almost be nothing, pretend to be nothing at night.

 

He has no dreams and without Ghost lingering in the nearby he is not thethered to wolf dreams neither.

 

It is not peace but nearly death, an abyss entirely of his own making that brings down deeper everyday, and everyday leaves less of himself around.

 

He is fine with it.

 

And then, it changes.

 

A face in the darkness, a feeling of heat shattering the numbness and forcing him to rise upward.

 

He thinks of Daenerys, wishes to reachforward.

 

He grasps on someone different.

 

The pale faceis framed by dark hair and it has something that reminds him vaguely of Arya’s. 

There’s a lively freshness of her, a gentle softness about her sharp features that in his sister-cousin has always been missing.

 

Her eyes are wolffish and grey, but they have less steel and more winter storm to the color- like seamist and snow gracefully agreed to mingle to lend her a touch of poetic violence.

 

The woman shakes her head.

“ Rhllor brought you back, and Rhllor won’t let go of you until he is done with you. You have to cease this madness... stop to let your self go. Take a decision. “

 

Then , before he can account for her words or frame any reply to them, her visage twists into something longer, paler.

 

Violet eyes and silver hair, high cheekbones and the same withdrawn, morose look he has caught himself in occasionally.

 

“You are not finished , Aegon. You have to fight this”

 

I am no Aegon, he thinks mulishly, but instead responds with:

 

“ Fight what? Fight for what? Was my glorious purpose to help hurrying along the end of both my houses, both my families? “

 

“ I was weak and foolish and blind” he wants to scream, but it comes out, even in the half lucid dreaming, as a strangled growl “ and now I am just tired”.

 

Rhaegar ‘s eyes glow eeringly in the darkness.

 

“ Yours is the song of ice and fire”

 

His voice rings with all the surety Jon lacks, despite the underlying sadness.

 

“ I am no Azhor Ai, I think we proved that , at least”

 

Lyanna Stark was there again, ethereal and cold , dead and alive at the same time.

 

“ Prophecies and visions are not such a transparent thing, Jon”

 

His given name sounds strange and wrong on her lips, when she had named him otherwise with her dying breath, but she smiles.

 

Everything fades, and he sees fire everywhere, again. Daenerys standing in the midst of a raging of flames, eyes, closed, naked, a dagger in her blood streaked chest.

 

Then she opens her eyes , and the dagger seems to slip out of her as her fleshmends around the deadly wound. 

One moment she isalive and breathing, and the next moment her whole body melds, becomes a greatsword with a pommel shaped like the jaws of a mighty dragon, that gleams in the darkness and seems to beam a light all of hers, consuming , bringing about a daylight from darkness.

 

She is the woman and she is the sword, She ismaidenand she is the weapon.

The princess and the monster.

 

Azhor Ai and Lightbringer, are one and the same.

 

She is the fire of a never ending song.

 

And he?

 

He is The Ice.

 

As if his dream is catching up with him, Jon feels the cold, cutting and unforgiving.

 

His hands feel like they are frozen.

 

‘ you will be fighting their battles forever’ He hears again in his brain, the words like a hammer as his head aches. 

His throats feels thigh, his eyes burn.

 

His skinfeels hardand yet bruised, like frostbite is eating him from inside out.The cold burns him too, icy needles cutting through from underneath the flesh. 

 

His world fades to blue.

 

Awakening, he feels stiff still, his joints rigid and aching.

 

He shivers. 

 

Daenerys ‘ voice in his ears is a merely whisper of a memory “ My dreams come true “

 

But he is no true dragon.

 

This was no more than a night terror and he will shake off his shoulders as such.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised an happy ending and will deliver, no worries on that front!


	17. Days Of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys brings fire and blood to Essos once more
> 
> Soundtrack: reckokning song, asaf avidan

Essos burns.

 

Daenerys is not sure of how she managed tokeep to a relative peace so longtruly, despite her newfound reluctance to expose herself in a new conquest. She has visited Dragons Bay plenty in the years she was settling in as Queen in Volantis. She is still the protector of it, despite Daario ruling it in her stead. She did keep expect for something to go wrong. 

 

For Brandon Stark to discover her, for voices of her survival to come to Westeros, and with it, threats of death. Or war.

 

It is part of why she wanted so badly to adequately prepared this time around, and increase the number of her soldiers before she could be attacked.

 

With the Dothraki being such a war-oriented people, the one way to keep them stalling without them starting to clamor to be allowed to raid villages it was to keep them busy.

 

And so Daenerys has endeavored to open a sort of military school on the outer quarter of Volantis, and gave the overseeing of the project to some of her older Unsullied, promising a place of teaching to those who wished to retire from a lifetime of fighting and moving.

It was actually hard to find an handful of Dothraki who were willing and capable of teaching volantenes boys their ways with horses, the arakh, the whip.

 

To many volantene peasant boys, and particularly orphans, the school had represented a good opportunity to escape misery or a life of petty crime.

 

Daenerys has still found herself, on far too many nights, to think of how unpleasant it was the idea of preparing boys of Daeron ‘s age to fight and die for her.

 

The employing of child soldiers in the city watchor elsewhere, no matter how prepared they were,it was something she had forbidden outright, finding the thought deeply unsettling.

 

With Volantis already hers, and Dragon’s Bay under her control to the south of it, Daario had nearly right away insisted that the natural move was, in fact, to move her armies to meet his, so they would jointly conquer the coast that was between Volantis and the Bay, uniting her domains.

 

Daenerys has given it thought but stalled. Waiting.

 

Her eyes remainedon Tyrosh, where it is said that slaves outnumber freemen three to one.

Lys, whose fortune was built on the suffering of children and women, and Quarth despite herself.

 

Yet the minor cities lining the coast between Volantis and Meereen are all in some way allied toslaver cities or deliberately neutral (and thereforecapable to be raised against her, potentially ) . Their given their position makes them either useful or dangerous. She cannot let it go, Daario was right.

 

If war broke, she knew she would have had a need of a clean path between Volantis and Meereen.

 

And that had made her to think ofthe Demon Road, a long and perilous path that cut through the Painted Mountains, but still linked Meereen and Volantis.

 

The road, whose dark reputation was due to a combination of frequent bandits encounters, the presence of tigers in the near woodlands , and landslides , cut straight through Mantarys , that Daenerys remembered clearly as returning her offer of an alliance with the severed heads of her envoys right before allying with Yunkai.

 

So when her bloodriders lamented their khalazar inactivity, she sent them to claim the Demon Road, cleansing it of the thieves staking it out from the sidelines, and then eventually seizing Mantarys.

 

The City of Monsters , they called it, and yet it had been once a rich and flourishing city of the Valyrian Freehold.

It had survived The Doom, even if its inhabitants certainly suffered thedamage of the toxic rains and volcanic clouds to this day.

 

She had not fully believed the stories until she could see sort of the people Montarys birthed with her eyes. Deformed men and women outnumbered the healthy looking ones from seven or nine to one in the common folk. There was a rather grand number of dwarves, but unlike Tyrion they had squashed heads and bulbous, protruding eyes, along with bones much larger than normal, so their hands and harms looked disproportionately thick and heavy for their short backs. Hunchbacks were common too, and folk with missing fingers, bearded women and two-headed girls.

 

It left her with a sensation of unreality as she gazed down to them from dragon-back. Through Drogon’s eyes, they all were just sacks of meat, blood and fear , tiny as ants, something her son ached to chase down and frighten just like last time, for the thrill of the hunt.

 

But, this time, she reined him in.

 

She surveilled the city, watched the crowd to cower as Drogon darkened the sun above them for a moment, before swooping lower, dangerously close , and circled the city taking a large berth from walls.

 

Shadows were already sent beforehand to check the absence of scorpions, cannons or similar weapons that could pose a danger to her son. She did not fear for him, and yet she was alert, every sense coming alive as she announced herself. 

 

Her Khalazar bellowed outside the walls, also in a show of threat.

She sent an ultimatum of surrender.

 

The city, stubbornly, stupidly, chose to fight a surprise attack it could not hope to counter.

 

It was maybe the shock of it that made the council ofregent families ruling the city to refuse a surrender.

 

The Dothraki taking of the Demon Road had made it so no news could not travel along it , and therefore until the very last days, the nearing of the Khalazar had been unaccountable for.

 

Her last coherent thought before she unleashed Drogon on the walls, was whether Mantarys had been expecting an attack, through some sentry that had escaped her blood riders, or not.

 

Just like that accursed day in Kings Landing, she opened the way for her khalasar and dived for the palace that was the Ministers’s chief administrative center.

 

Just like that day, her awareness of Drogon was heightened: the fire that burned a searing line between his powerful lungs and his throat, the increased heat of him, his shuddering, predatory excitement. His keen perception of everything, and his still towering, angry grief for the loss of Rhaegaland his mother at the hands of minuscule, weak, insignificant prey like the one that moved, tiny and offensive-looking, right under him.

 

Just one inkling of approval and he would go, chase those twisted little monkeys that vaguely resembled Tyrionacross their narrow, tiny passageways, destroy their stone huts, and burn everything in his path.

 

He wanted it.

 

And if she was honest there was a part of her that wanted it too. Not for bloodlust, or a delirium of omnipotence.

 

That day, when they had torched KingsLanding, her anger and grief becoming one with his, her body melding against his, her son had almost healed her, filled in one second that gaping abyss behind her. She was not alone, she was not broken or desperate. She did no longer feel like nobody in the world could understand or hold her pain. She had Drogon, and Drogon raged against the wretched human-kin and grieved his brothers. His loss was hers too, although she had more of it , for others Drogon did not quite care for , to pile on top of it. 

 

She wanted to be able to give her son that, again. His mother, the hunt, the aimless vengeance. 

 

She wanted to be able to give herself that intimacy too, to feel him so close that they were the same furious animal, no matter how monstrous that made her.

 

But she breathed in, stilled and instead of going hot and let his vicious rage to inflame her, she went cool,like a shadow, like something fraught with nerves that just wanted to hide inside her own skin.

 

It was not right, to want that.

 

She could not give in.

 

And she did not want to think of the burning bodies she had seen, had felt, and give Drogon her disgust. He did not deserve that.

 

Reality rippled around her, something responded to her distress. Her sight darkened and something... roared in her. A familiar thunder in her chest.

Rhaegal. and then, Viserion.

 

She smiled, but felt faint at once.The space around her seemed to ripple again, more violently.

 

Drogon roared in response before firing harder to a palace balcony.

 

There was human screaming, from somewhere, but Daenerys could not focus on it. Shadows slid off her skin, each of them cool and swirling, a flutter of black wings and void.

 

Her sons, trying to take shape and join the hunt.

 

The bond between her and then hummed and stretched, needful and Daenerys instinctively responded.

 

Did not mother’s always feed their children, when children were hungry.

 

From some place dark and deep inside her, she shared her fire with them, and they in turn departed from the shapeless and fluttering black mass they were to manifest into small winged things of the size of cats. Daenerys ‘ eyes swam with tears, because for a moment she looked at Viserion and Rhaegal and saw the hatchlings they used to be. It felt like a dream. But her children’s scales were a deep onyx and their eyes were like lavic fire. 

Their bodies were not quite completely solid either.

They still danced around Drogon, deeply confounding him. As they fired on the white walls in a eager show of support, their fire was also unrecognizable, a black and white , nearly liquid looking stream that still melted stone quite readily.

 

Daenerys looked on like it was a miracle ( was it not?) as Drogon’s mind nudged hers for an explanation to what his senses were telling him. Brothers but not-brothers, herebut not-here, different but also the same.

 

As her memory and Drogon’s synched, her capacity for concentration flattened brusquely. Rhaegal and Viserion hovered somewhere close to her, brushing her face, but her eyes had fluttered closed. Rhaella’s ghost hand, cold, suddenly clasped her in an invisible hold around her waist. Her presence squeezed her heart, like it was forcing it to pump harder, and although Daenerys ‘s skin felt clammy and numb, sensation was slowly returning to her.

 

When she opened her eyes again she felt tired, boneless, and her smaller dragons were gone, fading back to the place of darkness where they dwelled now.

 

Drogon felt strangely settled under her, and between them passed the brilliant hope that someday, maybe, she could be able to figure out how to repeat this on command, and then they could be together again, for a little of time, at least. 

 

She knew some of theory of birthing shadow monsters, but they were creatures conceived withhatred and sexual energy to accomplish a specific purpose. She had not dared to dream something like this could be possible.

 

She felt, for the first time in years, brimming with hope for miracles.

 

What happened later, given her giddiness and tiredness, was all a blur to her. The surrender of the city, the muttering surprise of some of the Dothraki who had seen the scene *before* without fully understanding it ( they were not all happy their khaleesi were being turned into sone kind of sorceress ). The kneeling of the common people.

 

Daenerys was caught in strange dream of exhaustion and peace, where even victory paled before her serenity in being given back her sons for a couple of minutes.

 

It was all she could think of. Having back her sons. Completely, if it was possible.

 

-

 

Kinvara, as it turned out, was not much ready to be of any help.

 

“ You are the Bride Of Fire, and that is your mystery to discover“ was more or less all the explanation Daenerys could entice out of her.

 

Shadow-bonds *were* supposed to remain confined to the Demi-mondre, not to manifest outside it.

 

Any peculiarity that had made this specific case different was likely to be ascribed to the whatever made Daenerys also able to not burn.

 

Perhaps she would truly need to resign to the idea a god had fashioned her for a greater purpose, after all. It was a frightening thought.

 

—

 

From the taking of Mantarys onwards, Daenerys there’s a pattern to her military strategy.

 

The small coastal cities surrender easily enough, accepting to become beholden to either Meereen or Volantis.

 

Rhaegal and Viserion never join their brother again. 

 

She has found she can make them corporeal she tries again to share her fire with them, but the longest the effect lasted is one hour , and she slept for three days straight after it.

 

She can only animate them to a consistent loss of energy to herself, that she is not quite sure she can afford.

 

Rhaella she can never manage to make into more than a literal ghost for a couple of minutes.

 

Yet she has not loss the hope. Someday, when she is stronger, and her fire purer, more powerful, she will have everything.

 

—-

 

In the meantime, Daeron is still her sweet and studious boy, her heart’s joy. Her other miracle.

He is enough.

 

—-

 

 

She bans her domains from commercing with the Slaver’s Cities.

 

It is near to a declaration of war.

 

Once she feared, looking constantly over her shoulder for Bran The Broken eyes, Tyrion ears ( Arya is dead somewhere across the sea, the fires whisper).

 

Her courage has returned to her, and she is ready for Lys.

 

—-

 

She will never forget the horrors she has found there, waiting for her discover.

 

In no place as in the brothels of the Perfumed Sister she has seen atrocities being allowed and forced upon innocents. The elegant sounding Pleasure Gardens are merely luxurious places where desperate souls are trained to be accepting of things like receiving or the administering of pain, being shittedand pissed on. With a smile.

 

The broken gaze of the child prostitutes and the dead eyes of the adult women that are found serving there with expressions of false cheer, will stay seared in Daenerys mind as long as she lives.

 

The basements where children and young women were abused and ‘taught’ until they were compliant were a sight so beyond any definition of evil as she has imagined that she can barely keep from throwing up after inspecting a couple of them.

 

 

For all that the city had suffered greatly it’s surrender, there’s still a revolt of the ruling class when she declares finishedevery local pillow house and abolishes entirely the practice of prostitution within the boundary of the city.

 

It is perceived by the local noble families as an attack to the economy, repute and history of Lys, but Daenerys cannot imagine to risk leaving all of this to go on.

 

She is tired of evil men lamenting predictably their right to do as they please. Tired to remember Tyrion ‘s advice in her ears that the path forward is always compromise.

 

With things you have to just rip the disease out, root and stem, and salt the ground around so it cannot be planted again.

 

Long traditions, it turns, require radical violence to be extinguished.

 

Most of Lysene’s nobility who rebelled is entirely exterminated, with the exception of women and children. Their riches and property are split among the former pillow slaves so they can start over, and as a reparation to the tortures they endured.

 

Widows and children of the executed men are left with a residence and an acceptable sum to live by, as Daenerys cannot quite stomach the thought of inflicting on another family what was done to her and Viserys.

 

Once more Daenerys, who is met with fervent worship by those she has freed, has to sit and wait to reform a place and come up with an idea to substitute an important source of income she has abolished.

 

Aside the headache of that, she misses Daeron, who she left behind under heavy guard in Volantis, safe, with deep and aching intensity.

 

She has never been so long away from him since he is born and she fears when she returns he will be bigger and taller and an expert on a thousand new things he learned, because he is like that, with a Targaryen capacity for obsessive concentration and what she imagines is a Stark leaning for relentless vivacity.

 

Drogon, if anything else, is happy with the frequent executions. She is even a bit worried at how playful he is on occasion, trying to choose the right angle to invest the little human monkeys with fire in a certain way.

 

—-

She would like to think it is the loneliness, but really with the issues at hand, it is the memories that make her to seek out Drogo.

 

She is so angry, all over again, and so full ofsadness and guilt ( how could she love him, after *that*, really, and how had she ever forgiven him, if she was still angry?) she cannot stand to look for her mother’s comfort.

 

It is much simpler to be a dragon hunting a stallion.

 

But the problem is, in a realm of death, there’s a certain recurrence. 

 

She will feel softer things she has felt eventually, like a song calling her back to a half forgotten place.

 

And they eventually shift back to a girl who forgave the unforgivable and a monstrous man who gave her a home ( and his heart, literally and figuratively).

 

She cannot really explain it, even to herself. She wishes for clearer lines in the sand.

 

Maybe there were things you could never forgive entirely, and never forget.

 

Not even if you wanted to.

 

——-

 

Unsurprisingly enough, it is eventually the former prostitutes that come up with the solution of transforming the pleasure houses in salons apt to entertain trough music, exotic food, dancing numbers,mummers shows.

Daenerys is happy enough to fund the project.

 

—-

 

When she returns to Volantis, she is surprised to feel as relieved as she does.

 

You don’t know you have a home until you miss it, she thinks, and sheis overwhelmed at the sheer joyful relief she experiences, spotting from Drogon’s back the familiarroof of her villa.

 

For all that Daario is overseeing the building of a castle projectedon a replica of Dragonstone near Meereen ( black stone and red doors as a tribute to her house colors and her childhood haven), this is a place she has grown to feel hers.

 

It was a gift from her people, and it is the place where she has seen Daeron to learn to talk and walk, where she started to heal and learned to plant trees.

 

When Daeron races to her, her heart near stops - he has indeed grown, and she can read all over hisadorable little face how happy he is his mother is back.

 

Despite the horrible weeks behind her, the grievous weight on her shoulders seems to lift at once and Daenerys Targaryen feels at that moment perfectly serene and sated, like none of the ugliness of the world can never touch her again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	18. Nights Of Frost

Spring has dissolved into a false promise beyond the wall.

 

 

Days might be nearly warm, when icy, violent winds are not whipping about, but the nights have turned into a whole other matter. 

 

Jon, who is not stranger to cold, still has to redefine his own concept of it, and admit that if not for the very large bonfire they start preparing in the evening, they would probably have died by now.Yet, the massive cutting,gatheringand transporting of wood slows them , and takes away a significant part of the time they before dedicated to hunting.

 

Hunting parties have to go much father to find any game at all , as the parties employed into wood cutting or transport make the area around the camp too noisy.

The game they find is scarce to boot - a couple of deers, a shadow cat or a bear are a exceedingly lucky find , as most of the large herbivores is moving deeper north or east, seeking for more food themselves. 

The tribe mostly survives on squirrels and little birds archers cause to fall down from the trees.

 

For the first time in his life, Jon knows what it is to go really hungry - to go whole dayon a scarce cup of bark and squirrel broth, because the little meat they had to go by had to be enough for the whole tribe, or whole weeks without any meat at all. He knows the feel of his ribs protruding against skin when he changes his clothing, the looks of emaciated children who have not enough strength to walk in the snow on their own and the ferociously desperate look of the mothers who carry them, refusing to leave them behind.

 

Ghost has not returned, fortunately, because Jon is certain he shall send his wolf away if he does - there’s no food to spare for him, and no assurance the others would not make their best to put arrows into him when Jon is not looking.

 

He finds some comfort in going through the motions of a simple routine, as usual, and tries to not scold himself into not feeling relieved he just might die soon.

 

His own black depression is a thing that persecutes him and deserts him in turns.

 

He has stopped thinking of Sansa, Arya, Ned Stark, Daenerys or anything that came before, striving to reconcile himself with the idea there is no point in remembering and self-flagellating over his own mistakes. 

 

Without the possibility of ever doing true amends, looking back only tastes like self-indulgent bawling, and he is as tired of his old regrets as he is of everything else.

 

He has transformed into a silent, practical shadow that holds on his own survival stubbornly, despite having no particular interest in anything around him.

 

It is a thing that only irks him more, most of time, making him grumpy and ill tempered, but efficient and focused on the everyday tasks he takes upon himself.

 

His nights remain dreamless, for the most, and yet when he awakes from them he has the sensation of feeling again the grasp of the empty and endless abyss around him, the very same vacant infinity he lingered in when he died.

 

For all that he cannot find in himself the will to do more than just survive,he knows he does not want to really experience that again.

 

Oblivion has stopped to be tempting, if anything else.

 

There are a few nights tough , when he dreams, and his vision is full of ice and snow, his mother’s voice calling to him, an haunting melody played by hands he recognizes not, but he thinks he should.

 

He never follows that call, caught in a fear he does not know how to explain.

 

 

But tonight, tonight is different.

 

 

He is standing near The Wall, and he sees it weeping water, like it is melting, but as his hand touches it, hesitant, the liquid goes up into a white, cold smoke and frosts again back on the hard surface.

 

Jon stares to the tips of fingers turned blue, and hears his name echoing in distance. Before he can think better of it, he turns, and he is somewhere different.

 

It snows and it snows, a field of blue roses surrounds him, and their sweet scent as it hits him in waves is nearly overpowering to the point of making him sick.

 

His mother stands before him, her arms open.

 

He steps back.

 

All his life he has dreamed of her.

 

As a noble woman who had turned his fathers head so hard his father soiled his honor for love of her, someone who he loved enough to go against his severely pious Tully wife and raise her bastard under his roof.

Maybe someone he meant to wed before Brandon Stark died and Lady Catelyn was forced onto him.

 

Or maybe a camp follower who comforted his father in his grief, and then begged him to give their son a better life.

 

 

All his life he had wanted to know whether she cared about him at least a little.

 

But all of his fantasies could never have prepared him for the truth.

 

After all this time it is still a slap in the face, and he cannot help but backtrack.

 

“ Stop running”

 

Her mouth has hardened in a thin line, and she looks at him like she might either put a knife into him or break into tears.

“ I am not “

 

He lies, and stands a bit stiffer.

 

She shakes her head, disappointment heavy on the lines of her face.

 

“ It was never supposed to go this way, Jon. “

 

“ How else do you think it might have gone?”

 

“I would have lived to raise you if I had had a choice in it , there’s no need to be so resentful. “

 

“ We would have been both scornedbecause of it”

 

“ Maybe, but I would have taught you to care less”

 

“ Like you did not care about Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys? I am not sure I would have liked that lesson”

 

For all that her callousness is not exactly a surprise, it still wounds him.

 

He has always imagined a better woman, in his mother’s place.

 

Lyanna ‘s eyes harden to chips of ice as they study him. Her voice, when she speaks again, is much cooler.

 

“Take care of what you say, Aegon Targaryen. You know nothing of what occurred.”

 

“ I know you and my father split the realm when you eloped, and Elia Martell was abandoned along with my half siblings to be butchered so I could be born legitimate. What on the hearth might I glean from that? About you? About *him*?”

 

While he is glad Lyanna was not taken against her will, when he thinks of the scenario the story paints, the portrait of his parents that emerges is one that bothers him greatly.

 

How could they be both so thoughtless, so selfish?

 

How much could his father have cared about him, if he left his other children to die with no thought whatsoever?

 

How much could his mother have cared about that tragedy, if she was fast to name him Aegon with no shame for the Aegon whose split skull had bloodied the Red Keep ?

 

But she could not have known his half brother had been killed when she gave birth, simply because if Ned Stark had seen the corpses of Aegon and Rhaenys when he came to Kings Landing , she had to have named him when both his siblings still lived. 

 

The siblings that were bastardized so he couldbe the heir, and were twice insulted when he was literally named into the role of replacement.

 

Knowing the taint of bastardy first hand, he cannot imagine the sort of man who consciously does that to his children.

 

Nothing of all of this inspires him to be remotely interested in posthumous conversation with Lyanna or Rhaegar.

 

Even if they are likely to be the product of the family madness.

 

“We meant no harm to anyone.”

 

Lyanna defends, and he really, really does not know how to respond to that.

 

“ I sent a raven when I left.-Lyanna insist before his silence- My father and my brothers knew how much I despised the betrothal to Robert, but all my voicing of my disapproval made no difference, as my father was set on his vision of future for house Stark. Then I met your father, and I assure you, he married Elia for duty, and her heart was no more set on him than his was on her. I admit we embarrassed her, at Harrenal, but your father did not honor me to shame her. You know that story, about the mystery knight that Aerys never had discovered? The Knight Of The Laughing Tree? That was me and Rhaegar, he knew and he let me go. That crown was just his way to give me a victory he felt I deserved.... but you are not interested in hearing any of this , are you? It is not what you want to really know.”

 

She looks genuinely devastated to admit that. Like if his own not wanting to know more of how his parents fell in love is a hurt she was not anticipating.

 

Jon wishes he could step in and say that, it is not case, or to be able to wipe that offense away.

 

But just like that time Daenerys stood before him and asked him in not so many words to love her, he cannot silence his own misgivings.

 

Gods forgive him but he is tired to feel ashamed. It is at times like all his life shame was a constant undercurrent, and he ran out of patience for it. Once his Stark blood was the one thing that made him proud, now everything is tainted with bitterness and disappointment, from his image of his uncle to the hypocrisy of his surviving siblings, right up to his dream of his mother.

 

It is ruined beyond all possibility of recovery.

 

“ I am sorry” he says anyway, because he hates hurting her all the same. Even if he is at all not sure of how ‘real’ is all of this.

 

Lyanna sighs, and her expression smooths down into saddened frown.

 

“We were not monsters. Elia and the children were supposed to be in Dragonstone, and there was her kinsman in the Kingsguard that could secure a ship to Dorne, if things went badly.... and I had told Benjen that Rhaegar wanted to take me as his lawful wife, and I went to go away with him. My brothers and father knew the truth, they had to. My father and Brandon can have chosen to not believe in Rhaegar ‘s intentions, or to save face with the Stormlands, but they knew. You have to believe me...”

 

“ I do” 

 

He answers, hating to see her in such a distress because of him.

“ and it does not make a difference, in how you feel about us?”

 

Her voice has a pleading note that almost makes him to say , at once, right what she wants to hear.

 

But Lyanna does not let him to go on.

 

“This does not matter. You only need to see. “

 

As if to compound the meaning of her words, Jon feels his hands aching with the cold. They are blue, when he looks down to them, and not of the blue of hypothermia. They are the pale cerulean of the Night King skin.

 

“ What is this?”

 

“ I think , deep down, you know. “

 

“This isnot a time to be cryptic!”

 

Before, all was giving him were details about things he did not truly want to hear.

 

Now he is interested in knowing things, she is weaving mysteries and playing with words.

 

The fear he has in his dreams of her now has a whole new meaning.

 

It is like they are here, for a reason, his parents, and he is quite sure he won’t like it.

 

“ Think! - Lyanna urges him- why are you here? What is this place? When you died, you were in a place, dark, lonely and terrying. Empty. You never wanted to talk about it again, and yet when you sleep, you fall straight back into it. Because you never left it. When the priestess chanted, part of you did not want to come back. You rejected the fire they wanted to put back into you, as you rejected going on to your loved ones, because you felt ashamed you had failed. You remained in between and the , you held on and as a result, you kept a link to this place. It is by the power of Rhllor you walk among the living, but you are still...”

 

“Dead?”

 

He finishes for her, and in that moment, he can almost see it. It almost makes sense.

 

The way he goes straight for the goal, as long as he has a task, but as soon as he is finished, he feels aimless, not quite sure of his place in the world. 

 

 

“Only by half, I imagine. Beric Dondarrion was brought back as many times as it was necessary to make sure Arya Stark would be alive to kill the Night King, but he was eager to serve. It made him easy to direct. You are shutting everything out. If you keep this way, it will come the day you might to not wake. You will be lost in your darkness forever. You need to stop, and listen to the signs.”

 

 

“ I like this less and less”

 

Magic in general is not something he has had the greatest experience with, but it seems it gave him Ghost, so he supposes he trusts the Old Gods he was raised with, at least some. Religion,outside the showings of piety he was taught when he was younger, is not something he gave much thought to.

 

This Red God , whose priestesses burn people and bend the natural laws of life and death for, makes deeply uncomfortable .

 

He does not want to be chosen for some grand task from a bloodthirsty deity more than he wanted to be born into blood claim to the throne. 

 

“ That is not a perspective you can afford. Not anymore“ 

 

 

“What do you want me to do?”

 

He feels like a child, when he asks her that, but really he feels lost.

 

How do you tell no to a calling you have not sought out but can’t refuse?

 

How you do know it is the right thing?

 

Theon told him once that any step he took, it was always the right one, like he always knew the right thing to do.

 

The path forward was clear to him, then, but now everything was muddled.

 

He reaches back, inside, for that old certainty , that determination., but there’s nothing there for him to get.

 

Maybe he can only go on, forward, try his best and hope it will make sense someday.

 

 

“ The Night King was a Stark, the children made him with a magic that deals in blood , and tied him the elemental strength of winter. When he was destroyed, with a physical weapon, in absence of any contrary magic, that winter energy bounded back, went unfocused to the source of its own power. The Land of Always Winter. And now that magic is unfocused, still trying on his own to accomplish the task it was invented for. To kill. To destroy. Except now, there is none to restrain it,or to direct it. The balance is off kilter. Another host is needed. Someone with enough fire to not be lost to the ice, who will leash the power without using it.  An half Targaryen, half Stark would be a perfect vessel.”

 

“No”

 

It is the only answer he can conceive of. 

 

“ How can you even ask it anyway? I thought you just told meI am half dead already, with no fire at all...”

 

“It is not a choice. -Lyanna clears out, absurdly serious- the magic is already drawn to you. Have you not noticed the unusual cold? You have Stark blood and you came too far North. Longer you stay, deeper North you go, the more you will feel the pull of it. It will want you, to seize you, to change you. And if you choose to reject it, you have to make sure no other Stark goes past the Wall. That may not be so hard - Our House is already dying, and if nor Sansa or Bran have children, and neither of them go past the boundary... it can be safe. But you have to go back to Westeros,  for your safety and to be absolutely certain none of your descendants crosses the divide either.“

 

“I will not have any children, I can-“

 

Lyanna makes to interrupt him, but suddenly she is chocking and her hands are wrapped around her neck , like she is trying to pry off some ache from it.

 

Jon goes to touch her shoulders, to help her to stay upright when she falters, but as soon as he grasps hold of her, he realizes she is boiling hot.

 

 

He is so startled he wakes at once, his heart pounding in his throat.

 

It is last time he ever dreams of her at all, but her warning lingers.

 

What is he to believe?


	19. The Destiny of the Bride Of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is a time for revolution in Essos. And for Daenerys, it is a time for surprises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for this Chapter is :
> 
> Revolution- The Score

It turns, to establish an unified ruling system to actually keep cities that have always worked as indipendent units is harder than to conquering them.

 

In the weeks after the seizing of Lys Daenerys has to head back on dragon back to put down one insurrection led by the old rich class of cities under Lys direct control - people who, while not residing in the city, had all of their business there and were therefore displeased to see it to go litterally into smoke.

 

It is another massacre, and after that she is careful to go back every few to supervise reconstruction, bringing with the handful of unsullied and fiery hand soldiers she can fit on Drogon.

 

It makes her uneasy, because her nights become uneasy and full of nightmares. She is haunted not so much from the burnings in Kys as much as from the memories of King’s Landing, chasing peasants through narrows alleys and enjoying the hunt.

 

It is the blunt view of retrospective, the bare contrast between her actions now and her actions now, that make everything so unbearably clear. What she is doing now is a necessity of war, the crushing of corrupt system to build something better in its stead, an annihilating of opposition that will spare her reign the casualties of more instability. It’s right , even if it is not pleasant.

 

What happened then, burning children smaller than Daeron out rage and spite, was a different thing. Wrong. Ugly.

 

But she could not see the difference then.

 

There was only her pain, her anger, her hatred. Everything elt hostile and threatening and she was desperate to both hold on and leash out.

 

She was blind, broken.

 

And now she is not.

 

It should be a relief, the awareness, and instead she is haunted by just how easy it was to fall.

 

She has not lost Westeros because she was crazy, a woman, or lesser than Jon Snow.

 

She lost it because her supporting net was shaky. She bet on the wrong people, who had either stronger ties to people who weren’t on her side or had a too different agenda from hers.

 

Kingdoms were won with war but they were held together by personal bonds, families , common ideas and visions of the future.

 

Having no family to back her, she can only count on the bonds she forged along the way, and that precluded so many possibilities already. It is a temptation to try and compromise to win more allies, but she has already seen where that path brings. To ruination.

 

What she needs is more allies who share her exact vision of a new order, or at least her dedication to radically uproot the old ways. 

 

There, outside the faithful of the Red God cult , the former slaves, Daario and her unsullied , she has nothing.

 

It is shaping to be right enough, tough.

 

Even with her concerns heavy on her shoulders , she can see something beautiful rising from the ashes of Lys.

 

While the former riches scramble to grasp at whatever remains of their old power, the commoners only prove their resilience and seemeager to take advantage of the waves of change to improve their lot.

 

Whereas the Westerosi commoners had a certain indolence about them, and acted the part of willing victims to the whims of nobles, essosi folk has long kept to the idea even the poor can raise themselves up, if they keep their eyes open for opportunities and their hand fast to serve Fortune.

 

Former whores have taken full use of the funds they inherited from the splitting oftheir master’s fortunes to buy shops, ships, shares of business ventures. Galena, a former courtesan whose fame was due to her ability to satisfy both sadists and masochists, becomes the closest thing Daenerys has to a local master of whispers . All she wants in return is a backing in her project to transform an handful of pleasure gardens in bathing houses.

She gets it.

 

Soon Daenerys is introduced to more like her- men young and old who were forced into sodomy when they were barely children stolen or soldout of their homes, full of simmering hatred for their clients, but who have learned the most disparate skills from dealing from nobles who came to the Gardens from the whole world.

 

Women who learned soon to be duplicitous, but have a ear everywhere.

 

All of them want to build a new life and a new Lys, something that will make it like masters never existed.

 

They are her people, and they have , surprisingly, both an experience with administering money and a knowledge of how the political and economic terrain of Lys works.

 

Daenerys can hand them positions of advantage with a light heart, fund more projects, upheaval the old ruling system and createa commoners council and a position of Lord Governor eligible to both women and men. Galena does find a way to gather herself the support to be a viable candidate, and Daenerys can return to Volantis with a lighter heart.

 

Lys is a place unlike anything else she has seen. The people have a darknessthat is thicker, a violence that is almost inherent. Even prostitutes have that snake-like look , like they would like to strike down and kill rather than to love.

 

And the masters were inhuman in their not caring about the monstrousities they inflicted.

 

Daenerys feels all the weight of what she has seen and the people she met, and the responsibility of the world she means to build.

 

Once it felt like it was just about herself and Daeron, what she wanted and felt to be right. But now the vision is wider, and she feels silly for not understanding at once that so many depended, truly depended on what she was promising, and the dream they were following in her.

 

With all the Unsullied she had led to a frozen death in the north, and after Missandei, she had looked away from that charge.

Fearing perhaps to let down her people again, and herself in the process.

 

Again, she was lost in her own pain, and she forgot what was important.

 

She cannot allow herself to make that mistake ever again.

 

—-

 

 

In Volantis, she is sick for days after her second return. Sleep is either evading her or catching up to her with a sudden, heavy tide of exhaustion. She has little appetite and frequent headaches. At times her body feels hotter, heavier although she has no fever.

 

And reaching for the Shadow-world for more than mere minutes becomes steadily difficult.

 

In her concern that news of her movements in Essos have to have reached Westeros at this point, it is easy to dismiss her state as stress.

 

She does not know what to expect.

 

She cannot imagine Bran Stark declaring war on her, especiallynow his realm is impoverished and reduced in size. His powers scare her tough - he might easily be a dangerous enemy if he cared to, even with the red priests magic hiding Drogon, herself and Daeron from him. Part of her wants Tyrion to know she lives, that she won despite his attempt to do away with her. 

Part of her does not want her enemies to have a chance to interfere in her plans so soon - and she wants to keep Daeron’s existence from the Starks as long as she can manage. 

 

She is not sure what she would do if they tried to get to him. Something crazy, probably, like torching the whole of the remaining Westeros.

 

Sansa Stark is sure to see him as a threat to her precious nothern indipendence. A boy who might join claims to both the southern and nothern thrones along with his mother ‘s little Essosi realm, Daeron would be a far too useful pawn to not use.

 

And the one thing she can do to protect him is to not die until he is a grown man. That ‘s terrifying . 

 

And yet, it is only spending time with Daeron that truly, entirely mends her, liberating her from the shackles of fear, regret and self doubt.

 

He is so full of life, sweet and brave, a chatterbox that is always moving, talking, following her with his eyes when she is in the room, demanding to be held, eager her to play with her hair and pepper her with questions.

 

He is her whole heart, and if she takes half a day off to enjoy a couple of hours in the sun, on the beach, the rest of the world falls away with surprising ease.

 

 

—-

 

 

Still, when she first looks at her reflection in mirror , it is a ghost staring back.

 

She looks pale and drawn, purpling bags under her eyes, like the grieving mess she was in the days before of her murder.

 

There are powders and oils for that, but not for the nausea that twists her stomach at the mere suggestion of breakfast.

 

She makes herself to go, most mornings, because breakfast is one of the few free moments she has to share with her human son, and she will pass the meal sipping lemon water and striving to pay attention to him and not the bothersome smells of the food on the table.

 

A few times she tries to be companionable and eat, and ends up reaching in the privacy of her rooms afterwards.

 

She despises her own weakness, and the mere thought she is letting herself to be once more reduced to a sickly and fragile shell from ghosts of a distant past.

 

Furthermore, her continued inability to reach the shadow-world is troubling in itself, and leaves her guilty toward Rhaella, Rhaego and her dragon children she had just hoped she could learn to manifest from shadow. 

 

Any sort of effort to practice magic leavesher tired and sweaty from effort, in a way that does not make sense when it was so easy before.

 

Physical practice, with her knives or else, tires her less but faster then usual nonetheless. She cannot avoid being confused, and pretend to spare more time to pour over state correspondence and documents in hopes nobody notices the change in her .

 

Her Dothraki handmaidens look stubbornly convinced she has been entertaining some secret dalliance and is not likely carrying its fruit in her belly. 

 

They look at her with more curiosity than usual and are quick to bring her the herbs she requires to keep her ailments down, but she has reprimanded them more than once for subtly insinuating that her figure looks fuller lately.

 

She supposes she would more easily forgive their suspicions if theyhad not unpleasantly reminded her that it is just impossible.

 

Daeron was enough of a miracle, and one she only had because she lost her sweet Viserion.

 

For all she lost Rhaegal too, and her courses have deserted her for abouttwo months at least, already, another pregnancy is a dream she has no chance to realize.

 

Even if she could carry to term, she would need a husband or a lover for that. And, if the situation with Jon taught her something, it is that she cannot risk having another child, one whose father would threaten Daeron’s place as her heir.

 

Daeron and Drogon will be all the family she will ever have.

 

She is, for the most, content with that.

 

Of course, it would be much easier to feel that domestic bliss if she could actually feel better.

She has not spent all her time away wishing to be back home only to feel so utterly miserable in her own skin.

 

—-

 

She keeps blaming Westeros until she receives envoys from the Iron Islands. Yara Greyjoy, Queen of the Iron Islands, is eager to ascertain for herself who rules on the Bay of Dragons now. 

 

It looks like rumors reached her of a ‘Shadow Queen’ who tamed with sinister magic Daenerys Targaryen ‘s dragon and used him to seize all was hers. 

 

Yara, who has recently delivered a daughter, Princess Lada, was not free to investigate personally the conflicting stories that were spread in harbors across the western continent, but had her suspicions, given the fires of revolution had spread from Volantis.

 

Her envoys had received orders to manifest interest in the renewal of certain promises, if her suspicions proved true, and to test the ground for new commercial treaties, if they proved false.

 

Daenerys had , after that, every right to feel relaxed and hopeful.

 

She sends generous gifts for the princess and the recovering mother, and receives interesting news on the hostile relationship between the North and Iron Islands.

 

The fact Sansa Stark ‘s winter kingdom is in near ruin , swept as it is by famine, piracy and banditry gives her no little satisfaction.

 

For all she wishes she was above gloating, she finds she is not.... if anything else, as long as her enemies are on their knees, they are not in any position to strike at her in any way.

 

Only the notion the Manderlys have resorted to sell the nothern bandits scourging the southern borders into slavery disturbs her. Apparently, since Naath is now protected by Unsullied ships in return for reduced trading fees, the slavers turned their attention to the unprotected nothern coast, and Sansa has sought to end that reaving and fill the empty royal coffers by treating to sell the criminals were becoming an increasingly obstacle to the trade with the Riverlands.

 

 

Daenerys feels she should be more than relieved.

 

She can expect to treat with Yara in person soon, and considering how twisted are the rumors circulating in Westeros about her conquests, it is at least possible she will have more time to secure her position before her survival becomes a known fact.

 

She could hardly hope in such good news.

 

She has every reason to feel well.

 

Yet her body keeps betraying her.

 

-

 

It is not until priestess Nara comes to her court from Asshai , three fossilized eggs black as coal as her trophy , that Daenerys starts to suspect things might be taking an unexpected turn.

 

The eggs are beautiful, and yet unmistakably different from the ones that hatched her children.

 

They are slightly smaller maybe, and the texture on their surface is different, smooth and grainy in turns. One has an iridescent shine when light hits it in a certain way. 

 

Another has a shell so black it seems to absorb the very light out of a roominstead. The third egg is just opaque.

 

She guesses they might not be dragons egg at all, or maybe to belong to a brethren too different from Drogon’ s for the hatchlings to be of any company to him.

 

But she is attracted to them all the same, and she cannot silence the foreboding in her soul when they are close.

 

Three new eggs, and she remembers far too well what she had to lose to awake her first children.

 

The timing of this finding too, strikes her as significant, after all the weeks she has dedicated to scrying flames for something similiar and coming up empty.

 

She keeps the eggs hidden from her boy, for all she wants to share them with him very badly too, in some hidden, childlike corner of her heart.

 

She is off-kilter, confused. 

 

She sleeps better with eggs hidden in a box above her closet. 

 

Her body instinctively relaxes, whenshe is in the same space as them.

 

And she cannot be pregnant, even if all signs point that way.

 

Surely, she caughtsome stomach ailment.

 

The one man she shared her body with is Drogo and, well, he does not count.

 

 

—-

 

According Kinvara, whom Daenerys has felt compelled to inform because she is frustrated by her lack of connection with Viserion and Rhaegal, Drogo does count after all. 

 

“ It is not altogether as unusual as it might appear. Plenty of the Chimeras in Asshai came from the union of shadow binders and demons inhabiting the shadow world. I have witnessed a few of such pregnancies, and none of them affected the mother negatively. While it is not something we encourage, in our religious practice, as it is bound to distract from our dedication to our lord, it is not infrequently that a priestess takes a shadow lover. Not a demon of course, as we aim to keep ourselves pure, and the seed of a dead man cannot expose us to such issues. But you, Daenerys Targaryen, are the Bride Of Fire. You bring life from death. It is your destiny. It should not surprise us this is possible. Rhllor has indeed blessed you greatly.”

 

Daenerys does not feel blessed.

 

They have called her mother of monsters before, with less reason. 

 

She has birthed a child horribly twisted by the blood magic she unwillingly exposes him to, already.

 

She has awoken dragons from a funeral pyre.

 

And now...

“ So my child will be a monster?”

 

They say the chimeras of Asshai are half human, half lion and part serpent in body.

 

They talk and they roar and they tear men from limb to limb with terrible strength.

 

She cannot feel anything about this. She remembers stifling last resemblance of life from Drogo with a pillow.

 

She does not think she can do that to any child of hers , no matter how monstrously born, but she should think of Daeron’s safety first, so she will probably have to send away ... her child.Gods, her child.

 

It is cruel, because she has always wanted a family.

Kinvara is gazing in the flames as the silence stretches , ominous, between them.

 

“ No, no. Your horselord was a man like any other. You will be a mother of two, and the dragon will have three heads once more”

 

Daenerys ‘s whole world tilts, with those words, from bleak desperation to something softer, lighter.

 

Hope?

 

 

“ I was cursed ”

 

“ And then you died, and it was twisted into something different, nearly a blessing. It was not a terribly focused malediction, considering how specifically it was worded. When one part was dismantled with the prince’sbirth, it started going awry in all directions, trying to perpetuate its truth. Now it has burned itself out”

 

Kinvara sounds almost disapproving of the lousy working and Daenerys cannot help smiling wide.

 

She can be a mother again.

 

And she will be, if the red woman is to be believed, soon enough.

 

“ Are you sure? That I am... ? That it will be... normal? Healthy? Human?”

 

It is hard to even finish the thought.

 

She has never dreamed it could be possible. It feels too good, too strange to be real.

 

“ I would not say normal, by most accounts, but human certainly.”

 

Kinvara says, with such a finality that Daenerys does for a moment, believes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes , I brought in Drogo so I could have my three heads of the dragon ( among other reasons... he will be still be serving as occasional shadow monster if Daenerys will have a need of him in that capacity). Obviously now she knows what can come from it, she won’t be being intimate with him again. 
> 
> I actually think it would be an interesting theory if Daenerys could only carry to term children from dead men since Jon was too partially dead when they made Daeron, since I will be going for a Haides-Persephone kind of resonance here.   
> It won’t come up in the story despite the coincidence tough as Daenerys won’t be having any other relationships from now on, and her other children will be eventually all Jon’s. 
> 
> I am not sure if someone expected this twist, but I hope you won’t be put off!
> 
>  
> 
> The Jonerys Journey will start from the next Jon chapter onwards (finally), and we will be exploring Daeron’s headspace next.
> 
> On another account, I don’t mean to imply Daenerys would be entirely successful in eradicating prostitution from Lys, but sexual slavery and sexual tourism are something she would be very intolerant of , and that she would definitely would have a shot to eradicating.


End file.
